20 GOTO 10

On a snowy Saturday afternoon, I made the 1.5 hour trek out to Brantford to visit the Personal Computer Museum. Although at the outset it seemed like a silly trip, when I saw those old computers, my inner (and outer) nerd took over and I spent the next 1.5 hours playing happily with these abandoned tech until closing time.

I talked to Sid the owner, who is a late 30-something who has been collecting personal computers since his teens. He now has over 1000 in his collection, as well as large collections of console and console games. He renovated a small building next to his house for the Personal Computer Museum which is open 1 day a month. However, there are sometimes small group tours for kids during the week. He is hoping to get funding to open an 8000 square foot space.

There were about a hundred or so computers on display, most them displayed in overhead shelves and in various nooks and crannies. But there were about 30 that were booted up, arrayed along 4 rows. Various old flavours of Apple products were show-cased; I played Choplifter on an IIe. There were also numerous Amigas/Commodores: the Pet, VIC-20, C-64 and some Amigas. A Hot Wheels branded PC, a Sun Solaris running Java Desktop, several versions of TRS and Tandys, a Coleco Adam, and some arcane machines I've never heard of. Apparently this is a rotating showcase so that other machines might be profiled at other times.

Upon seeing the black version of my first computer, a TI 99/4A, I went over and wrote a BASIC program of, what else, "Hello, world". Unfortunately, this particular machine had a malfunctioning cartridge slot so I was unable to load up the Ti Extended Basic module that I had spied sitting on the floor-to-ceiling wall full of software. This was a coveted item in my youth, but never owned. It gave the home programmer access to the larger sprites, among other additional capabilities, only available to the cartridge-based games. I should have asked to switch this one out for the beige version, which was my computer back in the 80s, sitting on the shelf.

There were also some consoles sitting around. I played Mouse Trap on the Atari 2600. I don't recall ever using the Atari joystick. What a clunky hunk of plastic. I would much prefer my own Gemini, a Atari clone made by ColecoVision. There was also a rousing game of Pong on a Sears Tele-Game hooked up to an old wood-grained television.

I was most impressed with the number of "portable" computers whose existence was unknown to me back in the day. These were not laptops since back then, laptops would have still weighed several lbs. They looked to be a cross between a calculator, a digital "typewriter", and some other computing functionalities. Unfortunately, none of them were up and running.

The only disappointment was that none of the ICONs were running. A file-server based networked computer found in Ontario high schools, they were an Ontario government boondoggle. Too bad the personal PC took off at about the same time, making these government-mandated computers look like crap. Still, it would have been nice to play a quick game of Offshore Fishing or A Week In The Life Of, where as a virtual teen you could sneak into a theatre to watch the 18-only art flick "Mon Ami, Mon Amour". Somewhere in a landfill sits an ICON file server containing my first text RPG and my graphical Tank game shoot-em-up.

I left the museum at 4 pm and got into Toronto at 5:30. This was the ideal time to visit Guu. Just like before, it was a cacophony of patrons and waitstaff. To the usual beef tongue, pork cheek, natto, and so on I had some daily specials including marinated tuna and pressed mackerel sushi. Pressed sushi are tightly packed blocks of rice instead of the ovoid nigiri or the cubish maki. The mackerel was ok, but the pressed sushi was done better at Rikishi. Afterward, I had some chocolate ice cream at Marble Slab Creamery. The marble slab was definitely over-rated, and in my opinion made the ice cream too cold to appreciate the flavour.

Tiger Road

(c) www.platoputas.com

On a chilly Thursday evening, I attended a pre-opening tasting event at Khao San Road, a soon to be opened restaurant. The chef of the popular but tiny Sukho Thai has decided to leave her old haunt for bigger digs. I felt a frisson of excitement as I entered the restaurant since the front to the place was still covered up - it's almost like I was a well-connected cool guy ("Hey, ladies"). But that faded a bit as the smell of new paint tickled my nose and the electricians wandered around hooking up lamps. It turns out the kitchen equipment was only installed that day.

No matter, Nuit is here to tempt us with some victuals. First, a Thai salad came out. I enjoyed the savoury curry taste, a nice change from the typical Thai mango salad which is too sour for my taste. I would prefer a little bit more kick like the delicious laab gai, or Laotian chicken salad. I was also a little disappointed with the lettuce base. This is standard issue for Westernized Asian dishes but I think there could be more exciting alternatives. For example, there is a Vietnamese salad that uses Chinese water spinach and banana flowers. However, the rest of the ingredients including chicken, boiled egg, and basil are tasty.

The second dish is a definite winner: deep-fried shrimp. The breaded coating had the deep brown hue of KFC chicken but it was not oily. The sauce that came with it was a slightly viscous, sweet garlic dip. I believe this is the same sauce, or very similar, to the one that accompanies Thai spring rolls. I'm not sure if the dish will be less plentiful once the restaurant opens, but on this night the shrimp was piled high. A pint of beer would have been perfect but the bar, made from recycled wooden planks, was still a work in progress.

The next two dishes were more typical Thai dishes: a yellow curry chicken with rice, and a pad Thai dish topped with shrimp. Both dishes were a little salty though the rice mitigated the saltiness. The pad Thai had a subtler flavour than the bad orange noodles you get in most Thai restaurants.

For me, the wow factor was in the last dish, or rather drink. Thai iced tea was served last as a sweet refreshment. Yum! How have I never tried or heard of this drink in all the times I've eaten Thai food? A cross between a spiced tea like masala chai and those sweet Vietnamese shakes or Taiwanese bubble tea, it went down so smoothly. Khao San has got to push this concoction on its clientele.

I think this new restaurant will do very well on Adelaide once it opens. Compared to the tired Thai restaurants on nearby Queen St. W., there's no contest. Nuit hinted that with a bigger kitchen, she will be able to make more interesting dishes. As well, Khao San will use fresh and local ingredients so the menu may be changing fairly regularly. This is all excellent news. The only downside is that it is sufficiently far from my West end digs for me to spontaneously drop by for a quick dinner after work.

Happily Never After?

I first saw Fairy Tale Ending at the Fringe Festival last summer in a small theatre located inside the Palmerston Library. It had sold out all its shows and I was at an extra show added on the last day. It was voted one of the Best of the Fringe shows and went on for 2 weeks as part of the Best of the Fringe Festival. Now it's back as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival at the Factory Theatre. I went to a Saturday matinee show.

Originally created for the Toronto Youth Theatre by Kieren MacMillan and Jeremy Hutton, it is a cross between Into The Woods and Fractured Fairy Tale. A cop (Cristina Gordon) is investigating a series of fairy tales gone wrong and calls on the eye-witness testimony of a young girl named Jill (Meagan Tuck) to identify the culprit from the list of usual suspects. First, the asthmatic Big Bad Wolf (Andrew Moyes) got his hairy paws on the Three Little Pigs (J.P. Baldwin, Carl Swanson, Mike Wisniowski) in a number called "Addicted" ("He's a porkoholic"). Second, Goldilocks (Jennifer Walls) never learned from her selfish behaviour ("I Totally Don't Even Give a Care") in destroying the Three Bears' stuff. Finally, the Troll (Amanda Leigh) turned the Three Billy Goats Gruff into a beauty product called "Gruff Exterior".

What could be making these beloved tales go so wrong? Is it the mysterious boy Jack (Maksym Shkvorets) that frightens everyone except Jill? The answer is a tragic accident that have made the Land of Far, Far Away no longer a haven from the changes of everyday life.

All the actors were fine and funny, though some were given leave to really ham it up, given the material. The singing was competent, though a few could not sufficiently project their voice into this larger space. As such, some of the reasonably clever lyrics were probably lost on the audience unless you were in the first 3 rows. The only negative to the afternoon performance was a cell-phone ringing behind me during a dramatic scene where Jill received some truths from the oracular Three Blind Mice.

Though not quite at the level of Sondheim's Into The Woods, this musical is an amusing 75 min for children from ages 5 to 95. Well, maybe 7.

Funny Or Die?

During first week of January, Comedy Bar had the Festival of New Formats. Every night, there was up to 4 1-hour shows, all free, where local comics can try out material. I presume that most of it was new stuff that needed to be audience-tested.

On Thursday, I saw 2 shows. First up was "The Celebrity Stand-up Hour". Comedians came up, pretending to be celebrities who want to try their hand at stand-up comedy. It sounded like a hit-or-miss concept and it was mostly misses. The real Al Gore doing comedy would probably not be that funny. A bad impersonation where Gore = stiff, wears a suit, "into the environment", is at a 2nd level of not funny. Kate Middleton (the future Mrs. Prince Williams) has practically no known "personality" or caricature traits. So to present her, in a badly-done "posh" British accent, as an upper-class heiress with a penchant for dirty words isn't shocking, merely painful. I was never so happy to have a beer in hand. The hour was partially saved by a mildly amusing take on Taylor Swift, a bubbly teen whose observational humour on any topic eventually circles back to boys; and M. Night Shyamalan as a comic who's into twist ending for his jokes. But the final comedian was a genuinely funny Superman. His take on the Man of Steel is that jokes let comic and audience find humour in a common experience but as Superman points out to laughter multiple times, he can't actually relate to any situation described in the jokes he give because ... well, he's Superman, an alien being from Krypton who lives a fortress of ice.

The 2nd show saved the evening for me. A much more veteran line-up of comedians (Ashley Botting, Jan Caruana, Matt Folliot, Chris Gibbs, Sean Tabares) did an improv version of "This Is Your Life". An MC (Darryl Pring) would bring up an audience member and probe them for bits of personal history. If some situation sounded promising, he would get the cast to "re-enact" the memory. Of course, it's never quite what the guest had experienced (not even close I'm sure), but the audience found it hilarious. I've never been partial to Improv. Back in high school, I thought improv students were 2nd rate comics and 3rd rate actors. Nothing about the American version of "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" changed my mind. But these comics cracked me up with their quick thinking and off-the-cuff jokes. For example, a guest belonged to a dodge-ball team called Abusement Park. During the subsequent re-enactment, one of the improv women introduced a rival team called Bruise On Your Own Adventure. Though the cast was a disparate group of comics, although there were a couple of best Improv winners, they sustained an hour of great comedy. I might have to give an estalblished Improv troupe like Second City another look.