Bubala Please: Hannukah Edition #1
I’ve been noticing a trend, or even tradition these days at my family’s Hannukah parties where the little cousins will all get together to clamour around a laptop and watch the latest cheeseball Hannukah themed viral song and dance videos. Sadly, I don’t think any of their parents will take it too well if I drop this number on them. I can only imagine their confused little faces, although some at their age will watch anything on a screen as long as it sings and dances. Oh my bubelahs…..
May Review – BlogTO
Posted by Jesse Ship / DECEMBER 4, 2012
Outside, a worn out sandwich board advertises $9.99 wings and beer from 3-6 pm, and suggests coming in to warm up with a cup of Viet coffee (I haven’t tried theirs but it’s hard to go wrong with a stiff cup of Trung Nguyen). If you were to peer into the now untinted windows on any given night, you’ll see a variety of up and coming bands singing their hearts out to fans and friends on a smallish elevated stage nestled into a corner in the front.
We ordered a pitcher of Amsterdam ($15, or $6 for a pint) and settled into a smallish bar table towards the back to watch a hodgepodge of local and touring bands, brought together by Newfoundland’s award-winning sax-driven rock funk band, Bay Town.
Not much has changed yet since the bar has switched over to the new owners. It still has a “quality dive bar” appeal with dim lighting, dirty wood floors, haphazard ceiling lamps with exposed wiring, and off-kilter wall hangings. The air vents that line May’s ceiling are a remnant from its underworld days, used not for A/C but to suck out the copious amounts of cigarette smoke from when Vietnamese gangsters would smoke and drink the nights away, and sometimes settle disputes in their own fashion.
Since the bar was just acquired as a ‘fixer-upper’ with numerous renos scheduled, there’s no sense in critiquing too harshly for the jumbled décor or bar set up offering tall cans of Stiegl ($6), Amsterdam beer ($6 pints,) a variety of bar rails ($6.00-$6.50), and premiums like Old Label Premium Gold, Remy Martin, and Crystal Skull Vodka ($10-$20).
Their new owner David, has big plans for May which involve turning it into a community entertainment hub, hoping to host board game nights that would run into the wee hours of the night, with a 24 hour kitchen. As a local hangout space, they are definitely winning with the living room/South East Asian hostel vibe with random plates of chips and candies scattered around the bar.
“We still have Viet customers who come for karaoke, and of course we don’t allow smoking anymore, but you can stay until 5 am if you want to. I envision people coming to study here, use our WiFi, dance, watch bands, play board games or play foosball — I want this to be a public entertainment space, however, we still want to hang on to the notoriety. People have been arrested and shot here. It has history and we think that’s kind of cool!”
Additional Details
- BEERS ON TAP:
- Amsterdam Blonde, Amsterdam Big Wheel, Golden Horseshoe, Hoptical Illusion, Smash Bomb Atomic, Red Leaf, Wellington
- SIGNATURE DRINK:
- Viet Coffee
- BAR SNACKS:
- Chips, Cheetos, hard candy, Viet tapas menu coming soon
- PATIO:
- Yes
- MUSIC/GENRE:
- Rock, folk, electronic, jazz—anything goes
- LIVE MUSIC:
- Yes
- WHO GOES THERE:
- Local music fans, friends of the band, neighborhood types, artists, musicians
- HOURS:
- 5 p.m. – close, Wednesday to Saturday
How much more music is being produced now vs 20 years ago?
The appearance of music streaming apps like Songza, Pandora, 8-Tracks,Spotify, and others has me asking the question, how much more music is being produced and published now, compared to 10 – 20 years ago thanks to easily accessible technology? My internal logic tells me a lot more since it’s easier to crank out, but how much more, or less, music is actually being paid for? Would love to get some stats from some industry heads.
Will we ever run out of tunes is the other great question being raised in this Youtube vid.
Skate For Cancer Movember Edition @ Sneaky Dees
I got hired to run an iPad-based photo booth for a my friend’s digital agency xmas party on Friday night, but ended up at Sneaks to catch the tail-end of Rob Dyer’s Skate 4 Cancer Movember edition party. People were already a little sloppy at this point, and you could say I’d had a few good drinks in me already. Boy, those advertising folks sure know how to party.
Super Furry Animals
Seth Falk is kind of an incredible dude. He’s under 30, has a zoo license (the only one in downtown toronto), and under his company, Hands On Exotics, he owns over 90 exotic animals. From desert lizards to 20 lb Columbian Pythons, lion headed rabbits, multiple lemurs, a kangaroo, five different parrots, and most recently, Katya, a five year old lynx that lives in his home with him.
I was incredibly lucky to get to volunteer with him at one of his regular visits to a retirement home (he does these trips up to three times a day). Apparently you need at least three people on hand when showing off a big cat. Yes, we brought a big ass deer hunting, target pouncing cat to an old people’s home. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take picutres during the animal demo, a) because I was busy volunteering and b) you’re prohibited to take pictures at retirement homes unless you are a family member. However, we were still able to snag a few at the end, as you can see here.
After the hour long demo, we returned back to the ‘office’ to clean cages and put the animals away. Seth keeps everything germ free environment as much as possible, at least when it comes to handling animals. My hands were heavily doused in alcohol-cleanser the moment I set foot in his animal area. Needless to say, I had a ridiculous amount of fun in the lemur habitat, where I frolicked for 20 minutes while three kinds of lemurs and a coatimundi kissed, licked, cuddled, nibbled and licked their way through my hair, hands and feet. All photos from the cage were self-shot, hence the moments of incredible awkwardness.
ERRRRYBODY FRY A YAM! Afrikan Boy – Amala Azonto (feat. Dotstar) OFFICIAL VIDEO
ERRRRYBODY FRY A YAM!! Cook dem foo foo too. How this doesn’t have four trillion hits yet is beyond me.
Ghanaian food rap is the next big thing. Don’t sleep on this.
10 Best Video Game Soundtracks
Music and games are like chocolate and peanut butter or, y’knows, ome other cliche about things that go great together.
By Jesse Ship Posted: 11/27/2012 5:21 pm EST
It’s not just the gaming — the hyper-jumping, mega-blaster shooting, sword-fighting or robot-crashing action — that makes a great video game.
The best video games also have rich characters you feel emotionally invested in, smart plotlines that keep your attention, and, in an area that’s constantly underrated, great musical scores.
Twin the right music with the right video game and you have something you’ll not only want to hear for 80, 90, 100+ hours of gameplay, but something that you could genuinely consider “classic” music — whether of the orchestral variety, or “classic” in the sense that it’s timelessly awesome.
We rummaged through the boxes of our old gaming systems (Sigh,Sega FYI Genesis is 24-years-old now) and classic cartridges to determine the best video game soundtracks.
Zelda (multi-platform)
‘The Legend of Zelda Symphony of the Goddesses’: Videogame Music Goes From 8-Bit Chip to 66-Piece Orchestra
Huffington Post Canada | By Jesse Ship Posted: 11/27/2012 5:25 pm EST Updated: 11/27/2012 5:25 pm EST
Anyone who has played video games in the last three decades has at some point likely taken a trip to Hyrule — the land ruled by gaming’s beloved and oft-kidnapped princess Zelda — throughout the franchise’s 20-odd iterations. While players may have been thoroughly engaged in the action, the epic musical soundtrack has always been an added bonus to the experience. So in order to celebrate the series’ 25th anniversary in 2011, a symphonic score was released to accompany latest title, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
The disc received such a positive reception that after a small production at E3 2011, it unlocked the gates for a potential touring show, The Symphony of the Goddesses.
Jeron Moore, The Symphony of the Goddesses creative producer, has worked on Prey, Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, and the controversial Duke Nukem Forever games. He pushed Nintendo to do the symphony.
“We brought the idea to Nintendo, who had already been working on something, but the idea was sort of foggy to them,” says Moore. “They hadn’t quite fleshed it out and so they put us on their team with the 25th Anniversary symphony, and they were very into our ideas, with little negative feedback.”
Working with Chad Seiter, the symphony’s music director, as his partner, they took on the task of deciding what to include and how to convert segments of the archaic 8-bitZelda themes from the original NES system written by Koji Kondo into properly symphonic music, a considerable challenge considering the minimalist nature of those old theme.
“The tough thing was that the original Zelda was written for an orchestra” said Seiter. “So to re-adapt it was sometimes difficult, but the greater thing is that you have these melodies that have withstood the test of time, so it wasn’t too hard to put it into this setting. I’ve been playing Zelda all my life so it’s been in the making for 25 years.”
Along with other adaptations, Seiter made the decision to add a bit of a cowboy color with a string-theme to accompany the many scenes of Link traveling across the desert on his trusty steed, Epona.
Thankfully, the gaming industry has seen a considerable boost in musical sophistication, and later Zelda episodes that the symphony pulled from A Link To The Past(SNES), The Wind Waker (GameCube), The Ocarina of Time (N64), The Twilight Princess (Wii) and Majora’s Mask(Wii) have had more work involved on an orchestral level.
CLICK TO READ THE REST OF ‘The Legend of Zelda Symphony of the Goddesses’: Videogame Music Goes From 8-Bit Chip to 66-Piece Orchestra
Yorkdale Apple Store Relocates…. Two Stores Over From Microsoft – FIRST PICS
In what could be interpreted as the biggest “Eff You” to Microsoft Canada’s darling baby flagship store at Yorkdale Mall, Apple is moving in two stores over. And to add insult to injury, their plot is monstrous — doubling, or even tripling the Windows-based square footage.
Without a direct quote, it’s hard to say if this is a genuine business move, or a just a coincidence. The new Yorkdale wing is not huge (more of a corridor extension), and the current Yorkdale Apple store is cramped and in need of a change. I understand their need to relocate but you would think competitive chains would have some kind of restraining orders on each other. I guess that’s just how the story of the big box battles unpacks. Your thoughts?
It’s a Windows Wonderland – Microsoft Store Launch at Yorkdale Mall
With tomorrow’s opening of Canada’s first Microsoft store at Yorkdale Mall, you could say that we are one step closer to living in the tech-oriented society envisioned in flicks like Back To The Future 2. Apple of course has always been an innovator, but when the software and hardware provider of the masses (i.e. Microsoft) opens up shop and starts pushing their ultra-inclusive ‘all-in-one’ Xbox integrated touch screen monitor computer systems, it’s time to take note, the seas are changing.
Behold! A 6,800 square-feet of slick Microsoft and Windows 8 wonder. The entire shop is lined wall-to-wall with LCD panels that mimic the tiles from the new operating system, shifting, blinking, and refreshing with hip and friendly scenes that have something for everyone, from christmas baubles, to gardening projects, and the compulsory half-pipe and skateboard scene. I wonder when the breakdancing montage is coming out…. But what really hooked me is that staff can sync phones to the panels to coach customers on how to use the apps or just demonstrate general functionality.
It will be interesting to see what level of customer service is available at the shop. The store managers and Microsoft rep insisted that all staff will be well versed in all aspects of Microsoft culture and software from Excel 2013 to Halo 4 to trouble shooting Microsoft Office for Mac, but when I asked an orange-shirted staff guy polishing up the sales counter if he could tell me anything about bootcamping Windows 8 on my Macbook, he told me he’d have to check with a technician… Hmm, so I guess they aren’t all ‘geniuses’.
Aside from that, Microsoft is really trying hard to become an all inclusive lifestyle brand with collaborations like the TFC and FIFA controllers. I’m not sure why they went with pink (was it to match with a Microsoft colour scheme ?), I fear the pink might just fuel the fire for the TFC haters, and confuse their fans.
The Microsoft store opens officially this weekend with a free outdoor concert by the San Franciscan Grammy-winning mellow pop/rock band Train whose “Hey, Soul Sister” song has found it’s place in thousands of retail play lists. Oh and they will also have THE GREAT ONE, Wayne Gretzky, in the house, playing Kinect Hockey with some lucky, lucky fans. Will The Microsoft store take off? We’ll have to wait and see…. which leads to the next post…… Yorkdale Apple Store Relocates Two Stores Down From Microsoft!
