Jan 31 2012
Last week I wrote about Vivian Maier and how I had determined the exact location of a photograph she made in Quebec City at some point in the 1950s. I indicated that I know of another Vivian Maier photograph also taken in Quebec City, but that I could not determine the exact location. Well, dear [...]
Aug 05 2011
Recently, on Twitter, @Audrey_Sprenger tweeted that Jack Kerouac’s favorite snack was “Med rare cheeseburg on Engl muf w mayo & fried onions” because “it reminded him of poutine.” My bullshit detector immediately sounded, and I replied saying so. After a bit of back-and-forth, I backed down, deferring to Sprenger’s expertise, because, as it turns out, [...]
Jul 25 2010
Some Hollywood studio is remaking the 1984 movie Footloose. I hated the original Footloose. OK, let’s be reasonable; I “didn’t like” Footloose. At the time, I thought it was about the dumbest movie I had ever seen. (Red Dawn wouldn’t come out for another six months.) If you’re lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the [...]
Jun 23 2010
June 26th is International HDR Day. HDR refers to “High Dynamic Range” a style of photography in which several different exposures of a single scene – usually one under-exposed, one normally exposed, and one over-exposed – are combined into a single image that supposedly shows all the shadow detail without any blown highlights. The software [...]
May 21 2010
Way back in 2001, Quebec’s then Culture Minister Diane Lemieux commented that she felt Ontario had no real culture. Everyone in Quebec snickered. Everyone in Toronto got huffy. The debate raged across Ontario with various ministers of this and that standing up in their respective legislatures and declaring that Ontario does, indeed have culture. Lots [...]
Mar 16 2010
Forgive me while I carve a rather meandering path to my point, but it begins last spring when I received in the mail a flyer from the Humber School for Writers. It indicated that Martin Amis would be the headliner, the star instructor, at Humber’s summer workshops for 2009. Martine and I both wondered what [...]
Feb 11 2010
A week ago Tuesday, I popped over to CTVmontreal.ca and happened upon a story about the Montreal Metro. Blah blah blah, whatever, and then I noticed the thumbnail image at the top of the story. Not a huge picture, just a stock image that they use for Metro stories when they have no story-specific images. [...]
