Tag Archives: toronto

Low energy 2012 reflection

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「「私、気になります！」」/「Mirunai」

You can see my 12 Days posts as sort of the most interesting things I’ve seen or read over the year. And so you can probably infer the following.

The best anime of 2012 was Hyouka.

Why? There’s a lot of reasons, but basically, it was the show I was most sad to see end. Oh and I guess there’s this too:

More generally, I think the highlights of my 2012 have been meeting up with people, something that I’ve begun to look forward to after being exiled in London. Of course, there’s the good old meetups with old university friends, some of which involved riichi mahjong. But this was the year that I got to meet some of the Toronto-area cartoon heads that I’ve been talking to on twitter for a while and it was great. And even the non-cartoon head Toronto council watchers were cool too, which is unsurprising, since Toronto City Council is the secret best anime.

Hopefully 2013 gives me some more chances to ruin your impressions of me IRL.

Awesome Music From Tokyo – in Toronto

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So back in August, by chance, I read a post about a tour from Zac Bentz’s music blog. I usually just skip posts about tour dates and stuff because I never expect them to be ones I can go to, but this one happened to be a Canadian tour with bands that I actually listened to! I was kind of surprised to learn that this was actually volume two of Next Music From Tokyo. After some wondering about whether or not I’d actually be able to go, my kind friends felt sad for me and decided to come along too.

We went to the Saturday show at Rivoli. The patio and restaurant portion looked pretty classy. The show was in the backroom which looked like it could fit maybe about 200 people. Apparently, there were about 100 people there, which made it seem nice and cozy without making it impossible to move around. Luckily, we snagged a place to sit on the side. Also, they had wireless, which made it convenient for twitteran’ in between sets.

Unfortunately for uhnellys, they were first and had to perform when most of the people hadn’t actually gotten there yet. They were pretty good, but I’m not really into rap, so it wasn’t really my thing. Their drummer was pretty awesome and I liked the guy’s trumpet and bass stuff. That is an instrumental combo that I don’t think you get to see everyday.

By the time susquatch was up, there was a pretty decent crowd. I think they were the most pleasant surprise of the night for me. Their style is exactly the kind of thing I like and their unique twist is also pretty great. The main vocalist likes how English sounds but isn’t confident enough to actually write a song in English, so the band essentially sings in pseudo-English. This is perfect for me because I honestly couldn’t give two craps about lyrics (hence, why I am far more open to music in a language that I don’t understand). The crowd seemed to really start getting into it during their set.

After this set, I went to check out the merch table and decided to pick up the susquatch album and the first two MassDre albums. Much to my massive disappointment, they didn’t have Zero Comma, Irotoridori no Sekai. Anyway, I’m pretty sure (but not entirely) that the one I was trying to ask about the stuff was Natsuko, the bassist and vocalist for MassDre. She seemed super happy that I wanted not one, but both CDs.

After that was sgt., one of my favourite post-rock bands. Why? Because I friggin love violins in rock music. In the case of sgt., the violin kind of takes the place of vocals. What I didn’t expect was how loud and intense they’d be live. I do think the violin sounded a bit strange at parts when it was hitting higher ranges because it was so loud. I don’t know if it’s because they were the third band of the night or if they were especially intense, but my hearing took a noticeable beating after their (and MassDre’s) set. Still, their music is absolutely gorgeous.

But I’m pretty sure that the night belonged to Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. The NMFT organizer guy was totally right when he said that MassDre are monsters when they perform. I love MassDre because, like violins, female vocalists in rock are another thing that I love. They also get bonus points because their lead singer is also the bassist. It was pretty amazing seeing Natsuko go from standing, smiling and waiting before starting, and then go into all-out beast mode as soon as she starts playing. They totally proved their worth in being the reason I came back to Toronto for this.

So yeah, it was a pretty fantastic night. It makes me sad to hear that turnout is a bit lacking compared to the first tour and that this could be the last one, especially with the tentative lineup for Vol. 3. I mean, chances are that with it being in April (finals season) it’ll probably take a miracle for me to go, but the promise of Midori, Rin Toshite Shigure, and toe is enough incentive for me to try and make a miracle happen.

Also, I need to find some way of getting Zero Comma, Irotoridori no Sekai now that isn’t prohibitively expensive to finish off my collection.

The fight to become Lord of the Centre of the Universe

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I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there’s an election going on to determine who will be the king of the MEGABIGHUGECITY of Toronto. And as with most things about the municipal government of Toronto and the things it’s in charge of, it has turned out to be disappointing and depressing. It wasn’t always this way. In the earliest stages of the race, soon after David Miller, the current mayor of Toronto, announced that he would not seek re-election, everyone was like wow, maybe we’ll have an interesting and exciting race!

Back then, George Smitherman and John Tory were the frontrunners, with Adam Giambrone not far behind. Rocco Rossi seemed like a respectable candidate, while Rob Ford and Sarah Thomson were the lololol candidates. Then, one thing lead to another and John Tory decided he didn’t want to be liked by everyone but lose another election while Adam Giambrone was forced out because he cheated on his girlfriend. And so we are left with…

Rob Ford

Rob Ford is currently the councillor for Ward 2 – Etobicoke North. He is famous for being angry at city council and saying terrible things. He’s pretty much adopted the McCain-Palin campaign strategy, because, well, he is essentially the embodiment of McCain and Palin.

He’s got McCain’s strange fixation on inconsequential spending while not having any sort of real plan to deal with, you know, real problems. He’s also got Palin’s knack for saying weird and dumb things and being irrationally angry at government. He’s got the bonus of just being an angry person in general.

Why is this depressing? Because at this point, he’s leading by a fair margin.

Joe Pantalone

Joe Pantalone is currently councillor for Ward 19 – Trinity-Spadina and the Deputy Mayor of Toronto. He seems to be the most experienced and competent of the candidates still in the race and as a bonus, he’s the progressive of the bunch. Unfortunately for him, he’s one of Miller’s biggest allies on council, so that means he isn’t palpable with rage and is overshadowed by the other four candidates who are, they will assure you, very angry.

Rocco Rossi

Rocco Rossi used to be the national director of the Liberal Party of Canada, but has never been elected to any public office. He started off the race seeming to be a decent alternative to John Tory. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, he felt the need to up the ante and that has lead him to make a bunch of insane announcements, like needlessly antagonizing anyone who doesn’t use a car or building a tunnel from Allen Road to downtown Toronto, evoking memories of some other failure in Toronto’s history.

George Smitherman

George Smitherman was the MPP for Toronto Centre and Deputy Premier of Ontario, while holding a bunch of high-profile cabinet positions in Dalton McGuinty’s government. In the earliest stages of the race, he was the frontrunner until he actually had to start campaigning. I guess he figured it’d be easy or something because his campaign sucks and was totally blindsided by Rob Ford. Now, he’s trying to out-angry Rob Ford or something.

Sarah Thomson

Sarah Thomson was a publisher and CEO. God only knows why she’s running for mayor, but somehow, she’s managed to stay above Joe Pantalone in the polls. She is slightly less angry than Smitherman or Ford and is slightly less insane than Rocco Rossi.

John Tory’s ghost

Hilariously, even after John Tory announced that he would not be running for mayor, John Tory is still the most popular candidate. John Tory is essentially one of those candidates that’s really popular and everyone knows he’s competent and wishes he’d be the guy, but for whatever reason, on election day, no one actually votes for him. This trend has occurred in the 2003 Toronto mayoral election, in the 2007 Ontario general election both as an MPP and as the leader of the Progressive Conservatives, and finally in the 2009 by-election in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock. I guess he decided that he didn’t feel like losing again so he’s punishing us by letting Rob Ford win.

At this point, if it were really close between Smitherman and Ford, I’d vote for Smitherman, because he’s not Rob Ford. Otherwise, I’ll throw in a vote for Pantalone and proceed to move to K-W forever.

Video Games Live

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So there was a free VGL concert on Saturday. I decided to go, even though everyone that said they would come with me decided to suck and ditch me at the last minute. Oh well. I was fairly pleased with VGL. Sure, it’s not the best; it’s too broad, and I’d rather have something more in the vein of Final Fantasy Concert or Gyakuten Meets Orchestra, but I’ll take what we can get here in North America.

Awesome

  • Baba Yetu live.
  • Hikari Orchestra Version live.
  • Phoenix Wright making it to the top three in the costume contest.
  • Metal Gear Solid and Sonic parts of the concert.
  • Blindfolded Mario pianist from the Internet plays Mario blindfolded and other pieces.

Not awesome

  • Harry Potter. It is not a video game. It does not belong here.
  • Metroid and Zelda. Those games have more than one track. Try playing some of them.
  • Costume contest. Guitar Hero characters are not real video game characters. Also, Cloud is not supposed to look like Reno. Try playing the goddamn games.
  • One Winged Angel. I do not appreciate having to listen to Tommy Tallorico add his goddamn electric guitar and drown out the orchestra. Also, FF7 is not the only Final Fantasy game there is and not everyone is a fan of it, especially not One Winged Angel.
  • Speaker quality was absolutely terrible. It’s an orchestral concert; I don’t care how loud it is, I want to be able to hear whatever the hell it is that’s being played. I can safely say that the terrible speakers ruined the Final Fantasy piano segment.