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I still want the bastards who send these things to all to go out of business and be forced to find honest work to feed their kids, but this one seems to capture the mood of the times, or anyway illuminate the current level of political discourse.

(Larger version at flickr)

Somewhat more than a year ago, a co-worker was leaving, and Rudy’s Cafe was proposed as the farewell lunch destination. I was way psyched, probably because the cod tacos sounded somewhat like the catfish tacos that Polly’s Cafe used to serve — one of my all-time favorites. We wound up going to Redbones instead. For a barbecue joint, Redbones is surprisingly vegetarian-friendly (espcially to the sort of faux-vegetarian who will sometimes eat cod or catfish), so I was ok with the swap, but have since nursed a desire to try Rudy’s even though the general opinion seems to be that it’s mediocre compared to other local Mex and/or Tex places like Forest Cafe and Jose’s.

This past Sunday we found ourselves practically on Rudy’s stoop and I found myself ravenous, and I proposed we slake my year-long Rudy’s-focused curiosity, and my wonderful girlfriend declared with some amusement that the exact same thing had already happened, and that I had, in fact, already been to Rudy’s. I simply could not recall this.

So I’m documenting the visit, in case my memory lapses again. Rudy’s codfish tacos are almost completely unlike Polly’s catfish tacos (which featured un-breaded catfish and a mayonaiseless slightly spicy jicama slaw OMG they were so good). But I really enjoyed Rudy’s version anyway (and got two meals out of the generously-portioned order). My friend Pat would surely have turned his nose up at the margarita, but it was cold and wet and had a perfectly adequate quantity of salt crusted on the rim, so my nose did no turning up.

An odd thing: the next time I turned my camera on after taking this photo, it also displayed a “no media” message (it had space for maybe 1 or 2 more exposures at the time). I thought it would be funny to juxtapose the two, so the next time I had another camera handy, I tried to photograph that display. But I can’t reproduce it. I can get it to say “card full” and “no card” and “lens cover,” and that’s about it.

From the main observation deck of the CN Tower

Did the pitch cross the plate?

(I might need to see the replay.) Looking down on Rogers Centre from the observation deck of the CN Tower.

Marty on the glass floor

It makes creaky noises when he steps on it. I’m not a steeplejack or anything, but I don’t generally classify myself as “afraid of heights.” I thought this was pretty freaky, though. None of the trompe l’oeil art on the walls even registered with me at the time.

Me on the glass floor

I really do have both feet on the glass, it only looks like I have one foot on concrete — that’s the thickness of the floor below the pane. It was surprisingly hard for me to get both feet on the glass.

Toronto mosaic

Rogers Centre redux:

This shot is from the “Sky Pod” a second platform 100 metres above the main observation deck. At 446 metres, this is currently alleged to be the highest public observation deck in an artificial structure.

As it turns out, I think dusk was a pretty good time to shoot.

“Excuse me, is this Blade Runner?”

The building where we ran our tests is attached to the big flat building with the two red circles on it. Our hotel is visible at the top as well.

People with fancier cameras were doing fancy exposures showing multiple sky-to-ground lightning strikes, but I thought the approaching storm was plenty dramatic anyway

Mist over Lake Ontario

We’re back on the main deck on our way out.

An accidental shot of the glass floor area that I liked

Looking up from the base

It doesn’t look like a building as much as an abstract composition. I took similar sharper shots, but I liked this one best.

On the way back to the hotel we passed this sculpture, which seemed to combine elements of totem pole and woodpecker-victimized tree. Plus, lights! Next time, I want a closer look.

One last shot of the tower, from a few blocks away. See what I mean about how monstrously tall it really doesn’t look?

(There are bigger versions of these photos on summervillain’s flickr site)

Looking up on our way to dinner after the storm:

As we walked by the BCE Place Galleria I said “Wow!” and we went in. I was immediately and forcefully reminded of Santiago Calatrava’s design of the Milwaukee Art Museum, especially Windhover Hall.

Turns out the architect was Calatrava.

Pierre Maraval’s Toronto’s Mille Femmes was hanging in the galleria. The thousand women pictured are “artistic, creative and inspiring women from Toronto and their protégés” including “architects, actors, dancers, designers, journalists, musicians, and others” according to the official description of the project.

On a less lofty level, I enjoyed the nose-to-tail juxtaposition of “Mr. Tasty Fries” and “Master Soft & Delight”

Set into the pavement of West King Street were stars commemorating many notable Canadian people, organizations, and institutions, including SC TV.

. . .and the rear entrance of Second City’s Toronto Theatre was practically across the street.

We ate at Fred’s Not Here. I had blackened hamachi on an orange risotto with wilted spinach — maybe the first time I’ve had yellowtail cooked? Not sure. I appreciated that the menu noted the sustainability of the fish. The risotto was perhaps a touch sweet, but did contrast well with the spices on the fish.

I did snap the boombox-bearing nude on one of the strange murals:

There was another picture I longed to take, but it just seemed too intrusive. There was another mural executed in the same deep red and orange palette, depicting the gates to a city or castle nestled among jagged mountains. Despite the presence of what looked like cherubim in the sky, it seemed distinctly hellish to me (you can see a glimpse of it on the restaurant’s web site).

Seated directly under left side of the mural were four women. Most of them had obviously dyed red (one purplish) hair, and the dark brown of the other diner was given a reddish cast from the light reflected from the painting. One woman had a punkish, upswept shock of hair. None of them were slender. They were all wearing dresses that looked to me like they were cut from nightmarish 70’s curtains: fist-sized globby paisleys and jittery ranks of triangles. The oranges, blacks, and pinks of their dresses clashed productively with the hues of the painting.

Oddly, no one sat opposite them throughout most of the meal, so they would have been easy to photograph had I dared. The woman at the end of the table looked as if she were at least one glass of wine beyond having fun, or perhaps she was desperately overtired. Either way she looked spectacularly out-of-it.

Taken together, they had a sort of mythic quality: norns or valkyries at the banquet table, perhaps. But they also had a slightly out-of-focus aspect, like Renoir’s tipsy, wealthy revelers gone wrong and dark.

I think it would have been a swell photo.

(There are bigger versions of most of these photos on summervillain’s flickr site)

I spent most of last week on the road doing usability testing for a software project in Toronto and Tampa.

This was my first look at Lake Ontario from the hotel:

To one side I could see Rogers Centre.

We talked about going to see a Blue Jays game (they were in town) but this didn’t exactly materialize.

After checking in, we headed to the test site, and Toronto’s architecture started knocking me out. This building reminded me of playing with Piet Hein’s Soma Cubes.

The stately Toronto Harbor Commission building seemed lost in a sea of parking lots and more modern construction. Also, the CN Tower is growing out of the top of it.
This shot also illustrates something peculiar about the CN Tower. It is one of the very tallest free-standing artificial structures on the planet, and it’s in comfortable walking distance of this shot. But from the ground, it doesn’t look nearly as tall as it really is, compared to other nearby structures.

The CN Tower is also a little problematic for me as an amateur photographer. It certainly commands attention, and it’s awfully photogenic from many vantages. But I’m conscious that thousands of other people have taken basically the exact same pictures, many with superior skill and equipment. I can console myself that not everyone got lighting as dramatic as this:

The Toronto City Centre area reminded me a lot of some of the futuristic paintings of Robert T. McCcall, except for the lack of flying cars. (McCall’s collaboration with Isaac Asimov Our World in Space was a favorite book of my youth.)

At this point my co-workers are in a quit-taking-pictures-so-we-can-get-back-to-the-hotel-before-the-skies-open-up mode

My hotel looked onto not only the lake and the Rogers Centre, but also onto another hotel, seen in here through heavy rain

These folks flew kites through most of the worst of the storm. I presume they were unaware that if Franklin had performed his famous lightning/kite experiment as it is often popularly described, it almost certainly would have killed him.

I like it when the line between sky and water becomes indistinguishable.

As the storm wound down, I saw a few long singular waves like this one on the surface of the lake. The kite flyers are still at it.

(There are bigger versions of these photos on summervillain’s flickr site)

AHHH! Brain ’splodes!