DPL

It’s basically a grown-up version of a rye & ginger, it’s called the Brow Burner, and I full intend to make these for myself until my dying days.

Voila!

It’s Adam Gopnik talking to the Globe and Mail about Lawren Harris, Canadian painting, and the RBC Canadian Painting Competition.

Asked if Canadian painting has any distinguishing characteristics, Gopnik noted its aversion to “shock content” and “kitsch content.” And as much as he hesitates to generalize, he says, “if you put a gun to my head the thing that strikes me about all the work in the RBC competition … is that Canadians have a national inclination – or should I say natural? – for the small-scale inspection of large-scale themes. To my mind, the greatest of Canadian painters is Lawren Harris. … He puts an iceberg into a picture yea big to a frame yea big” – Gopnik gestured with his hands to indicate a small dimension – “yet it’s a totally persuasive iceberg.”

Well, Marty the horse is probably in the Royal York hotel by now. And Calgary Stampeders fans are happy. Amazingly colourful quotes below:

It was, really, a resumption of the old battle between East and West. In the 60 years that Calgarians have been riding horses into hotels, the only problems have come in Ontario. Ottawa, in 2004, required negotiations — “We got in, after much struggle,” says [Aengus] Watson — and in 2007, the horse was turned away from the Royal York again. There was some feeling among the committee members this time that they could have snuck a horse in the back while making a show with one at the front, but it was decided they would go with one. It’s not like the old days, anymore.

“My favourite one was years ago at the Royal Connaught in Hamilton,” said Watson. “And we went into the hotel earlier in the day, and we were measuring the freight elevator, and some hotel guys came along and said, ‘what are you guys doing?’ And we said, ‘We’ve got some gifts for the Premier, and we want to make sure they fit in the elevator.’ And they said, ‘You’re going to put a horse in there!’

“And we said, ‘You know what, you’re going to be on the front page of every newspaper across the country, you’re going to be on TV on the 6 o’clock news. Why wouldn’t you want that publicity?’ And he said, ‘OK.’

“And we put the horse in the elevator, and they’d just redone the whole ballroom, carpet and everything. And the horse crapped the whole way through.”

read the rest here.

It’s Mary Elizabeth Williams seething with righteous rage about Donald Trumps’s latest repulsive behaviour after Hurricane Sandy smashed the northeast:

You know what? I can’t even laugh at this pompous ass right now. I can’t even find his epic hubris and freakish Obama obsession entertaining. Something about the fires and the explosions and the water damage and the wondering when my children will be able to go back to school and the not being able to reach my mother on the phone and the trees knocked down all around my neighborhood have done something to my sense of levity, I guess. Something about the thought of all the people in real trouble right now, who’ve lost so much, makes me angry.