Toronto Sigh-clists Union.

In my inbox today, yet another Email from the Toronto Cyclists' Union (an erstwhile organisation I am proud to support) pushing BIXI (see here for my take on the programme).

It suprises me that a group that supports responsible cycling and cycling infrastructure would endorse what is essentially, a way for the city to convince the public it cares about cycling while spending as little as possible on it. Don't forget, the bikes and the drop-off stations for the bikes will be plastered with advertising meaning more visual noise on our streets. Not to mention that riders become de facto mobile advertisements, endorsing the sponsors whether they support them or not. Do I want to advertise CIBC (or whatever, I don't know who the BIXI sponors will be)? I assuredly do not. I wouldn't plaster my own bike with advertising.

As with many of the things the City does, BIXI may look progressive and novel to tourists, but does next to nothing for those who choose to live and work here.

(Yes the picture above may have been Photoshopped to include a helmet, something BIXI doesn't seem to care about).

Dexter, season 5, episode 3

I think Dexter as a concept is played out. We are now in the Zone of Diminishing returns. Tighten the Kyle Butler noose all you like, it's still not very interesting. Someone has seen Dexter kill or knows what he is? We've seen this before. Twice. Dexter has to hold the person who knows his secret hostage? Wake me when it's over.

Unless there is some sort of way-out plot twist coming, one that actually makes sense in terms of the story, it's time to put Dexter in the kill room.

A Glympse (into the abyss)

Hey, you! Yes, You. I want you to know where I am and let you track my movements on a website in real-time. What's that? You don't give a flying Foursquare? Well, tell that to the programmers of Glympse.

It's a new app that lets Self-Important You broadcast your location to your co-workers, family, or friends so they can then watch your movements on their PCs or smart phones.

My question, as with all these types of things, is "Why?!" I cannot envision any circumstance under which this would be useful. If you're going to be ten minutes late, just be ten minutes late; I don't want track you like I'm running fucking NORAD. I don't know how you work, but if someone I'm meeting with hasn't shown up by the time agreed on, I'm looking over my to-do list, responding to Email, or catching up on reading.

As the chirpy video guide shown above says, "My family likes to watch me as I head home." Listen, Chirpy, If your family has nothing better to do than watch a blip that represents you move towards their location, you might want to get them part-time jobs, or hobbies, or buy them books or something.

Orwell was wrong: we weren't forced into living in a surveillance society, we welcomed it. Big Brother is Watching Us, through channels we've put in place and happily pay for. Congratulations! You're the Mayor of Airstrip One.

Fringe-tastic Four?

You can't tell me that someone working on Fringe isn't a long-time fan of Marvel's Fantastic Four comics. Earlier, I wrote about the similarities between The Observers and The Watcher, both in their appearance and their motives.

Here's another, from the latest episode, season 3, episode 3, "The Plateau", set mostly in the alternate universe. In this episode a character named Milo seems to know when a single, small event will create accidents resulting in specific deaths.

LUCAS: Someone is causing these accidents or purpose.

ASTRID: You're asking me if it is possible for a person to use a ballpoint pen to set off a chain of events that culminates in someone getting killed by a bus, twice? There's no way.

LUCAS: What if someone calculated the variables?

ASTRID: Thirty-seven people in the intersection, twenty-two cars, four trucks, two buses, going speeds of five to ten miles per hour... and that's just to start. In total, we are talking about a hundred and twenty variables in a dynamic system of differential equations. I can't solve that kind of problem, much less manipulate the outcome to my advantage.

But, of course, Milo can.

In Fantastic Four #15 we are introduced to a character called The Mad Thinker, who describes his abilities thus:

Aside from The Mad Thinker's enhancing his own thinking with a Kirby Super-Computer, quite similar to Milo, no? So how are these similar characters defeated? Well, similarly.

In the case of Milo, Olivia does something that Milo cannot predict, ignoring a warning to use oxygen. as Peter-as-imagined-by-Oliva says, "Because you didn't know the protocol... you did something that he couldn't factor in."

In the case of the the Mad Thinker...

I'm not pointing fingers at the writers of Fringe, accusing them of ripping off Lee/Kirby. On the contrary, I'm rather enjoying finding all these parallels. To paraphrase Walter, "I believe [takes a bite of red licorice] that these coincidences are not coincidences at all."

Fringe: Walter smokes Brown Betty, tells story

I rather liked "Brown Betty" with Walter's recasting of the Fringe regulars as noir-film characters to tell an allegorical story. I wish they'd gone all out with the noir aesthetic, but realize they probably couldn't due to budgetary restrictions. Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson seemed to be having fun playing a different riff on their characters. Disappointingly, Lance Reddick and Blair Brown (Broyles and Nina Sharp), played their roles exactly they way they always do. I don't know if this is a fault of the writing or the actors, and it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the episode. How can you not enjoy an episode with singing corpses? Only Walter Bishop would come up with something so bizarre.

I also liked that the Observers were called the Watchers in Walter's fable... a nod to the Marvel Universe? This doesn't seem unintentional. There many nods to the Fantastic Four comics in Fringe.

I was reminded of The Prisoner episode "The Girl Who was Death" while watching this. Both tales use a story-within-a-story setup, where the story being told reflects and adds our appreciation the outer story.


Oh, I also thought the episode "White Tulip" from two weeks* before was a terrific time-travel yarn. It had an unexpected emotional payoff and an antagonist who, if you look at the timeline, never meets our protagonists, yet nonetheless interacts with one of them. It's not very often we get something an unexpected ending on TV that doesn't feel tacked-on for shock value or that isn't a setup for upcoming episodes.

Can someone give Peter Weller a regular role in something please? His conversation with Walter was riveting.

* Sure, I wrote "two weeks before" but I really watched this "White Tulip", "The Man From the Other Side", and "Brown Betty" in one sitting. I prefer to watch week by week. I think that preference is embedded in my pscyhe, having been a pre-VCR child and teenager. Until I'm caught up, however, three episodes of Fringe at a go isn't a bad way to spend an evening.

Fringe... here comes Alternate-Peter

Annnnd, two episodes later, Walter Bishop, ca. 1985, abducts Peter from the alternate dimension. My prize is in the mail, etc.

Coffee, Coffee, Everywhere!

eye Weekly has compiled a subjective list of the 10 best coffee shops in Toronto. Get your fix here.

This is a far better use of column inches than the incredibly juvenile piece entitled "Toronto's Most Huggable Douchebags" a couple of weeks back. (No, no link. If you must read it, go search for it.) Perhaps the eye writers were suffering from a lack of caffeine that week.

Around the City in 24 Cups #2

Second in my "report" on the coffee shops featured on the Indie Coffee Passport. Part one here.

Details on the Indie Coffee Passport here.

#7
Moonbean Coffee Company
30 St. Andrew Street
(in Kensington Market)
October 7, 2010, 4:30 p.m.
Atmosphere/Décor: bright, if a bit ramshackle, like much of the Market.
Seating: Plentiful. Two rooms, front and back patio
Wifi: Yes, didn't try it.
AC Outlets: Didn't look.
Traffic: Lots of take-out service happening, quiet inside.
Staff: Friendly, efficient.
Drink of choice: a large home-made lemonade. I'd had coffee elsewhere in the morning and afternoon.
Would I return? Not sure. This place didn't make much of an impression on me.
Overall rating: 3.5/5

Dexter, season 5, episode 2 (no spoliers)

Apart from the trio of unnecessary shots of dried blood turning wet on a rental truck's floor to indicate Dexter had noticed it and the ghost of Harry still spouting exposition (this will bother me until the end of the entire series), I didn't hate this episode. Some loose ends were tied up and a new killer was found, albeit one who can't really be bothered to dispose of his handiwork very well.

A bit slow, but this installment had some nice character moments for most of the secondary characters.

Dear Fringe, Enough foreshadowing already!

Please, Fellow Viewers of Fringe, please tell me that you were far less than surprised when it was finally revealed that Walter Bishop had taken an alternate-universe Peter as a child to replace Peter from this world who died when he was a boy.

I haven't gotten to this point in the series yet, to this big "reveal". I've just finished watching "The Bishop Revival". No one has told me that this revelation will happen and I didn't read about it on some sci-fi blog, but Come on! you'd have to be six bucketfuls of dumb to miss this. Hints have been dropped--Thud. Thud! THUD!--by Walter and by other characters and through visual clues throughout the series. Forget about being destroyed by a collision with the other dimension... our world will just crack under the weight of all this foreshadowing.

Which leads me wonder... All these hints and two FBI investigators (one who doesn't miss a trick), and Peter (who has been shown to be super-observant) don't follow up? What the what?!

Still hooked on this damn show, though.