What You'll Miss Tonight

Jason Rolland's got a new Monday night, at the Last Toby's, which I feel compelled to check out.

Toby's used to be a Toronto institution, a fairly solid burger joint chain (sit down, not take-out) with a dog for a mascot and a number of downtown locations. I still remember the day I went in to the Yonge & Bloor location and discovered to my horror that they'd changed their fries. It was all downhill from there, to the point that the Last Toby's (College, just east of Bathurst) would be unrecognizable to a time traveling Torontonian dropped into 2009 from 1992.

Still, I have enough trouble turning down karaoke as it is. Karaoke + nostalgia potential is pretty much a slam dunk to get me out.

Zelaya Goes Home

Al has a great blow-by-blow of today's events in Honduras. Especially noteworthy is how disorganized and ineffectual Micheletti's response has been. For instance:

5:21 p.m.: Coup "president" Micheletti just spoke on a "cadena nacional" (in which all TV, radio and cable stations are required to broadcast his message). He confirmed that Zelaya is in the country, insisted that the June 28 coup was "legal," said Zelaya will have to face charges against him, insisted that the country is in complete calm (if so, then why the military curfew?), attacked the government of Brazil for protecting Zelaya in its Embassy, and told everyone that the National Police and the National Army are behind him. He ended with shouts of "Viva Honduras" to a small group of coup functionaries. He sounds frightened, but is digging in his heels.

Upon the termination of his broadcast, a woman on Radio Globo mocked him mercilessly, saying "no one owes obedience to an order by a de facto regime," and noted that the curfew was called just ten minutes before it took effect, leaving millions of Hondurans to have to get home from work but without enough time to do it. "Nobody is obeying the order," she said. "Nor should they."

It's just a matter of time before Zelaya regains power. And hopefully with as small a body count as possible, although Micheletti is just stupid and desperate enough to do something dangerous as he feels control slipping through his fingers.

Melting Away in the Summer Heat

Last week, when I was busy with the film fest and not paying a whole lot of attention to the kerfuffle over exactly how many teabaggers showed up in Washington on the 12th, I mocked the notion that millions of people had shown up, but was willing to concede that the number had been in the hundreds of thousands.

CJ says I'm gullible:

I also have quite a bit of experience with very large crowds — as a touring musician with Al Jarreau, Stanley Clarke and George Duke, I played in front of many very large audiences. The largest was probably the first “Rock in Rio” festival (we shared the stage with Queen, Rod Stewart, and others), which had about 250,000 to 300,000 attendees. From all the pictures and video I saw, the tea party was nowhere near the size of that crowd.

What You Missed Last Night

(I've decided to post more about my karaoke misadventures, in between political babble and belated film reviews. You've been warned...)

Fun times at the Rivoli last night, despite the lack of a huge turnout. I got roundly scolded by Rhett for ignoring him and MAR at the Bad Lieutenant screening at the Elgin, despite the fact that I said hello to Todd sitting in the row in front of them. Ulp.

I also pulled off the rare Elvis double (Presley and Costello), while random cutie from Vancouver showed up and blew everyone away with a repertoire ranging from Aerosmith to Alicia Keys. Allie has an awesomely raspy, very slightly Billie Holiday-ish quality to her voice that allows her to get away with stuff mere mortals shouldn't be able to get away. She says she's coming back to Toronto in a few weeks. She better!

The newly repatriated Sass was a no-show however. Quelle dommage.

TIFF Top 10

This was in many ways an odd festival. 2009 was well above average in terms of quality - there were only two films I saw over the 10 days I would classify as 'bad', with everything else being at least OK or better - but heading into the final day nothing had really blown me away. There were no little hidden gems I stumbled into at random, no films that shook my view of what a movie could be.

None, that is, until my second-last film of the festival, and the two-and-a-half-hour celluloid trip that is Enter the Void. Gaspar Noe could justifiably retire from directing, since there's no conceivable way he could possibly top it. I mean, where do you go after you've deconstructed and rebuilt cinema from the ground up?

Anyway, here's my top 10:

1 - Enter the Void
2 - A Serious Man
3 - Whip It
4 - Micmacs
5 - Daybreakers
6 - Antichrist
7 - The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
8 - Hipsters
9 - Waking Sleeping Beauty
10 - An Education

Yes, I still have to finish my reviews on half of those. Sigh.

Almost There

Lane Kiffin doesn't yet have the Vols at the point where they can really compete with the likes of Florida, but so far through the first half they're keeping it close against the Gators in Gainsville. The running game looks good and the whole team is playing a much tougher and more physical game than they have the last few years under Fulmer. Once they have some experience in Kiffin's system, look out.

I'm predicting an upset of Mississippi on the road in November.

More Fools

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), lacking any sense of irony or maybe even working brain cells, wants an investigation into the... well, I'll let the WSJ explain:

Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously.

The Texas Republican on Wednesday released a letter he sent to Washington’s Metro system complaining that the taxpayer-funded subway system was unable to properly transport protesters to the rally to protest government spending and expansion.

“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” Brady wrote. “These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.”

A spokesman for Brady says that “there weren’t enough cars and there weren’t enough trains.” Brady tweeted as much from the Saturday march. “METRO did not prepare for Tea Party March! More stories. People couldn’t get on, missed start of march. I will demand answers from Metro,” he wrote on Twitter.

H/t to JC for that much. But wait, it gets better, Back in July HR3288, a Transportation and HUD appropriations bill, came up for a vote. It included $150 million for emergency maintenance funding for the DC Metro.

Brady voted against it.

The only appropriate response to people like this is open, mocking laughter.

Fools

Only 18% of conservative New Jerseyites have figured out that Obama is actually the Anti-Christ (scroll down to page eight in the crosstabs).

What's it going to take for the rest of them to realize the end times are upon us? A female African-American president?

Hee Hee!

Linda McMahon has joined the throng competing in the Connecticut Republican primary for the chance to unseat Chris Dodd.

Easy wrestling jokes aside, I think Jesse Ventura already demonstrated that you underestimate someone transitioning from the WWE to politics at your own peril. Ventura cut way better promos than Linda ever did, of course, but he also didn't have a sizable personal fortune with which to finance his campaign.

If she proves to be an actual fiscal conservative and not a wingnut, I'd say she could even be the favorite to win the nom.

Amazing

I'm on day seven of the film festival, and I'm only eight reviews behind (A Serious Man, Under the Mountain, Collapse, Whip It, The Art of the Steal, Vengeance, The Loved Ones, and Waking Sleeping Beauty).

This whole "getting sleep" thing might actually work out.