Month: December 2002

You can’t make up headlines like this: Mormons Again Promise To Stop Baptizing Dead Jews:

SALT LAKE CITY — The Mormon church is again promising to stop posthumously baptizing Jews.

Leaders from both faiths say an agreement made seven years ago has apparently been broken. At a meeting Wednesday in New York City, the church reaffirmed its commitment to removing Holocaust victims and other deceased Jews from its International Genealogical Index.

That’s a list of about 600 million names Mormons use to perform ceremonies baptizing the dead into the faith. It’s meant to offer salvation to the ancestors of Mormons, but many others are included.

An independent researcher said those baptized posthumously include Anne Frank, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Adolf Hitler and Buddha.

The founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said the Mormons are not “the exclusive arbitrators of who is saved.”

Even if the dead are from your own faith, doesn’t it seem too little, too late? Haven’t they already been judged and processed? It’s like showing up at the pizza place weeks after you bought the pepperoni deluxe and saying “May I have some money back? I brought a coupon.”

Perhaps Anne Frank would’ve appreciated the gesture.

As for the others, they’re not even Jewish. I don’t think Buddha would’ve minded. I’m trying to imagine ol’ Genghis saying “Please, call me Elder Khan now.” (I’d like to see William Shatner do ol’ Genghis’ baptism: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!)

But really, my Latter-Day Saints pals, Hitler?

Speaking of Anne Frank, a little Google-work revealed to me that the famous story about Pia Zadora’s terrible performance in the title role of a stage production of The Diary of Anne Frank isn’t true.

The scene: Velvet Underground, last Friday night. The DJ starts into a set of ’80’s hits. Madness’ big mainstream hit, Our House, is playing. I’m dancing with Aussie Kate and her friends.

Me: This takes me back. I was fifteen when this song came out.

Aussie Kate: Oh yeah? Well, I was five.

Now I know how Orneryboy (you’ll need Flash to see the comic) feels.

[If you don’t mind overdosing on Flash, you might like Madness’ official site.]

Before I can discuss how the neighbourhood might change, I need to first describe it to you, especially if you’re not from Toronto.

It’s home

I live in a little residential pocket neighbourhood just two blocks north of Accordion City’s Queen West neighbourhood. The term “Queen West” is usually used to refer to the section of Queen Street West that is bordered by Dovercourt Road on the west and University Avenue on the east. This neighbourhood is comprised of mostly two-or-three storey buildings housing an eclectic variety of businesses and other services: comic book shops, community centres, european delis, new and used clothing stores, an AIDS hospice, furniture stores that carry everything from 50’s retro-modern to Indonesian wood carvings, offices, churches, musical instrument stores, sex toy shops, bookstores, all sorts of bars, several hot dog carts (including Max’s, which is open 24 hours a day, every day except Christmas), social workers’ offices, dance clubs, restaurants from vegetarian to greasy spoon, a grade school, several independent art galleries as well as the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Ontario Academy of Art and Design, a large psychiatric institute, hardware stores, toronto’s best surplus electronics store, walk-in clinics and the combined studios for CityTV, Space, MuchMusic and Bravo. Many of the buildings on the street have stores at street level and apartments above them. Most of the residents of the neighbourhood live in little residential pockets just off either side of the street.

The people are just as varied as the storefronts: little old ladies from either Kowloon or Krakow do their shopping alongside suits from the nearby financial district. Earlier this afternoon (the first relatively warm one in a while, and sunny too!), I passed a cluster of pre-teen kids gathered around one who was playing something new on his Game Boy Advance, some chain-smoking art students hauling their portfolios to class, a gaggle of high school-age girls peering through the glass walls of the MuchMusic studios, officemates in blue suits talking about their upcoming office Christmas party, two guys with mohawks horsing around, and several moms with strollers. Many of them live in the area, but the neighbourhood is so popular that a good number of the people you’ll meet come from outlying areas, the burbs, or often from Toronto’s satellite cities.

The street is lively during most hours of the day. During the morning and evening rush hours, it’s a major throughfare to and from work, especially for those who work in the financial district or hospital zone nearby. Come noon and dinner, its many restaurants make it a popular destination. Shopping keeps the street busy during the day while clubbing and bar-hopping make it lively at night.

Once upon a time, Queen Street was the evening place to go for the 18-to-35 who were on the social leading edge. This was twenty years ago — my teenage years — when “alternative rock” and its associated culture were just getting started, and Queen Street West was a nexus for both the music and the culture. Since then, the title of Toronto’s number one must-go-there strip moved a couple of subway stops north and a short streetcar ride west to the slightly College Street West, but Queen West’s history and continued liveliness place it among the top five.

It’s a great neighbourhood, and I call it home.

Queen West, in Pictures

These photos were taken on Monday and Tuesday and cover the small portion of Queen Street West near my house, between Soho and Duncan, a distance that can be walked in less than five minutes.

This weekend, I was triple-booked: a birthday party for my friend Eldon “Gumby” Brown, who’s just returned to Toronto from a number of years in Vangroovy, followed by a mellow Christmas party at Chris’ place, followed by another party thrown by my friends Matt and Brenda. Here are some scenes from the last party of the evening, at 7 Fraser Street, the warehouse loft (a real one, not a “loft-o-minium”) where that most influential of bloggers, Mr. Cory Doctorow, resided before moving to San Fran-scarcity.

Roger Highfield’s very entertaining book, The Physics of Christmas (a Christmas present from my sister from a couple of years ago), recounts the legend of St. Nicholas, who would later morph to become Santa Claus or Father Christmas:

Legend suggests that St. Nicholas was born around A.D. 245 in the town of Patara, an important Byzantine port in Turkey, only a couple of hours’ sail from Gemiler. When Nicholas was a young man, his father died, leaving a great fortune. Nicholas began anonymously giving the money away, especially to children. Eventually he became the Bishop of Myra (the modern-day coastal town of Demre), at the southernmost tip of the Bey Daglari mountains. (The name “Myra” is derived from that of the resin myrrh.) There he supposedly performed several miracles, including saving sailors from drowning and resurrecting three boys who had been killed by an evil butcher. It is the best-known of his miracles, however, that helps to wrap St. Nicholas into the legend of Santa Claus.

This miracle concerned a noble and his three daughters, who had fallen on hard times. The daughters had little chance of marriage, as their father could not pay their dowries, so they faced a life of prostitution. One night St. Nicholas, hearing of the girls’ plight, threw a sack of gold through a window of the nobleman’s shabby castle. The sack contained enough gold to provide for one daughter’s marriage. The next night he tossed another sack of gold through the window for the second daughter. But on the third night, the window was closed. Ever resourceful, St. Nicholas dropped the third sack of gold down the chimney. Townsfolk heard the story and began hanging stockings by the fireplace at night to collect any gold that might come their way, preseumably — hence the tradition of the Christmas stocking and Santa’s affinity for fireplaces.

A real stand-up guy. A dude, if you will.

One of those defining moments in childhood is when you discover or are told that there is no Santa Claus. Many kids take it badly, and one vicar in England forgot this in an well-meaning attempt to explain what Christmas is supposed to be about.

According to this report in from BBC News:

It is the news no child wants to hear – and certainly not from the mouth of a vicar.

Youngsters at a Christmas carol service were devastated when the Reverend Lee Rayfield told them Santa Claus was dead.

Even parents at the service in Maidenhead, Berkshire, were shocked to hear Mr Rayfield say it was scientifically impossible for Father Christmas to deliver so many presents so quickly.

Mr Rayfield has admitted making a serious misjudgment in telling the story to children as young as five.

He said: “I did not realise how young some of them were and I am sitting here now wondering how I managed not to realise.

“Even when I was there, I did not twig. I am mortified and appreciate I have put some parents in a difficult position with a lot of explaining to do. I love Christmas.”

Mr Rayfield also told the youngsters that reindeer would burst into flames if they had to travel at the speeds necessary.

Ah, yes, Exploding Rudolph. That’ll put the kids in therapy for years.

By bringing scientific proof into matters of faith, the vicar is treading ground that even angels with lots of insurance give a wide berth. He may have to explain why the science that proves that Santa cannot exist cannot do the same for God.

[Thanks to Loki for the link!]

My sister-in-law Grace is in town for a little while and staying over at my sister and brother-in-law’s place out in Etobicoke. They live on a nice secluded street in a neighbourhood with old trees and well-kept houses where many young families live. I thought that Grace might find it a little too quiet being there all the time and invited her to come out with me on Saturday night.

“By my standards, it’ll be a fairly low-impact evening, but it’ll give you a chance to get out. You might want that, now that my Eileen’s living in the slow lane.”

“Hah,” said my sister later on, “I’d like to see him try my schedule — getting up at 5:30 a.m., taking care of a little boy, work (she’s a doctor), PAIRO (an doctors’ organization, in which she plays an active role), and keeping house — and then see if he still calls that the slow lane.”

Okay, so it’s a different kind of “fast lane”. It’s just not my kind, at least not now.

I’ll be the first to admit — and I’m certainly not the first to point it out — that good chunks of my life have been rather carefully “constructed” — a term my friend Dera used to describe it — to be a somewhat offbeat one full of interesting and amusing happenings. (I always find it odd that people put so much planning and effort into their careers but somehow expect that the rest of life will simply sort itself out.) I’m sure that when the time comes, I’m going to have to give a little of that up for Joey Jr. — or what ever his or her name will be.

(Or maybe not. Perhaps I’ll be at the forefront of the “strollerpunk” movement.)

So, sis, I take back that bit about slow. You may no longer be the hard-partying vodka-guzzling machine, but you’re now a cooler supervillain than Evil Overmom.

As for me, I think I’ll twist a quote from Augustine:

Give me domesticity…but not yet!

According to my sister (who saw it while shopping last week), there’s a Christmas stocking with “But Santa, I can explain!” printed on it.