Category: Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

A scene from a recent pillow fight in London. Click the image to see the source page.

[via Torontoist] This could be fun: A big flash mob-esque pillow fight

has been scheduled for this Sunday, November 13th, at 2 p.m. at Dundas Square.

The

general rules are:

• Soft pillows only!
• Do not hit anyone who does not have

  a pillow.

• Do not hit people who are holding cameras.
• Swing lightly,

  there will be many people swinging at once!

• Remove expensive glasses

  beforehand.

• Extra pillows may come in handy.
• Feather pillows are even

  more fun.

• Do not begin until the signal (a referee whistle.)

Who’s with me?

Here’s where Pillow Fight Club will meet up:

Accordion City writer James Reid and his girlfriend went out a Friday night to see a preview screening of Derailed, which came with a free search-and-seizure procedure:

…the line was moving slowly because they were asking customers to raise their arms so that they could be electronically frisked with a metal detector, and women’s purses were being searched by uniformed security guards. Try to remember that this is Toronto, Canada we’re talking about here, not New York, Tel Aviv or London.

People who submitted to the search (everyone from what I could tell) had their cellphones taken from them and checked at a table set up in front of the theatre and they were given a ticket to reclaim it when they left.

I was having none of this, and checked the back of my ticket stub to ensure that there was no mention of being required to submit to a search listed as a condition of sale.

As my girlfriend and I made it to the front of the line, the guard looked at me and asked me to raise my arms for the search. I politely declined saying “No, thank you”, and proceeded to the ticket taker. I could hear him calling “Sir! Sir!” behind me, but even though I slowed my pace in case he was really going to do something about it, as I had expected, I wasn’t stopped.

The ticket taker took my ticket and I waited for my girlfriend just inside the gate, as her purse was being subjected to a thorough going through by one of the guards.

Since she was there for work, and her deadline was that night, she was not ready to risk not seeing the movie. Her 150 words won’t have room for what happened next.

Her phone was taken from her and put in a sealed plastic bag with a claim ticket, and she joined me where I was waiting, past the gate, and we walked into the theatre together.

To add further insult to the debacle at the gate, near the exits at stage right and left were two uniformed security guards at each door, all four with video cameras scanning the crowd and making themselves very conspicuous.

This was not just a bit of pre-show MPAA theatre, they stood there for the entirety of the movie, red LED’s glowing, scanning the crowd to remind us that we were under close surviellence [sic] and our actions were being recorded.