Rating: NNNNN
“Is it just me or is everyone suddenly rebelling against the anti-fast food trend?” It’s just you, Rebecca, sez us to the National Post’s Eckler when she enthuses about pouring hormone-laden hamburger into her defenceless fetus and munching more than four Big Macs a week while pregnant. Further proof that the Post’s Dr. of Frivology is losing her mind as she moves to Calgary.
Yee-haw, a new T.O. TV station
It would be rude to say that the strangely somnambulant launch of the city’s newest TV station, Toronto One, had all the glamour of a Red Deer wedding held in a highway motel party room. Or to suggest the Alberta-owned station’s unveiling was as graceless and clumsy as an Anne Murray dance move just because awkward, shrilly self-aggrandizing hosts in cheesy evening wear failed to excite a room of bored bystanders. And just because the station’s owner Drew Craig and general manger Barbara Mitchell both appeared together sporting identically coloured blue shirts in a taped promo piece, why doubt their eye for television? Welcome to the hood pardners.
Starmakers fund foolishly
Don’t get Up front wrong, we love any form of grants to artists whether from the government, guilt-ridden professional associations or private companies. But we have to wonder at the recent disbursements from the Radio Starmakers Fund, a penance pushing front for Canadian radio broadcasters. The group is forking over $650,000 to Canadian musicians. Sounds great but lucky recipients include Bruce Cockburn, Sum 41, Holly Cole and David Usher. Last time we looked, this group of performers is doing pretty well and can probably afford to keep themselves in guitar picks and string wax. Maybe adjudicators should work a little harder searching for new talent that really needs the bucks.
Randy Roadrunners’ regrettable route
Another professional sports team in Toronto, another group of women, no doubt with father issues, stuck in cheesy tights to hop around for distracted beer swilling fans. Yes Toronto’s American Hockey League Roadrunners have arrived and they want you. That is if ‘you’ are a woman who doesn’t mind being ogled by adrenaline-juiced sports fans. When will sports promoters realize that at least half the fans find these dance packs at best pathetic and probably offensive? Had to love their newspaper ad dialing for dancers for something called the “Toronto Roadrunners Crowd Motivation Dance Team”. Rolls right off your tongue doesn’t it?
Glad you’re gone Mel
With Mayor Mel Lastman heading off into the blazing Hawaiian – and then Florida – sunset it would be appropriate to bid him a fond farewell. Sadly, Up front is not that emotionally developed and all we can muster is a hearty good riddance. The mayor’s claim that Toronto is a better place for his efforts is simply a fantasy. The crippled, corrupt city that he leaves in his destructive wake is a shambles that cannot entirely be blamed on, well, anybody but him. Mel got screwed by the same Tories that gave him a mega-city and the mayoralty chain. All his right wing contacts deserted him. He may look like a lovable, goofy Buddy Hackett but he was a cynical dealmaker he sold us all out so he could grab some glory. Glad you’re gone little fella.
