QUEEN BATHURST

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Banned From Gawker Update: Banned From Gawker Again!

There you have it. I gave their editorial staff several days to respond to my question seeking clarification for why I'd been banned for asking them to front the money for the Rob Ford crack tape.

Today, I decided to use my other account to needle them about it publicly. So on their current piece about Rob Ford's press conference today, I posted the following comment (linking to my original story about being banned the first time):

ARFox - Max Read
Of course if you guys had actually fronted the money for the crack tape instead of banning people for asking why you didn't, maybe Rob Ford would be long gone by now... 19 minutes ago

Grumpy Cat, Or: Why Memes Should Not Be Movies

I'm sorry guys. I had a big post planned for today because it's my 29th birthday and I was going to give the "old guy on the front porch" treatment to a bunch of different topics, but then a dozen people in my news feed informed me Hollywood's doing a Grumpy Cat movie and everything got completely derailed.

"I Bought Hash From Doug Ford"

Editor's note: The decision to publish this piece was not taken lightly.

When the author first approached me about posting a personal essay regarding his recollections about buying hash from Doug Ford in Etobicoke in the 1980s while his brother, current Toronto mayor Rob Ford, was present, I was both incredibly excited and instantly terrified. The Globe & Mail's in depth report on Ford's drug dealing past had just been printed, and obviously the atmosphere around the Ford brothers right now is extremely heavy. It's no secret that they're both powerful and vindictive.

A Non-Eulogy For Non-Evolved Non-Thinkers In The Wake Of Henry Morgentaler's Death

You know what I've always thought are really fantastic? Human rights. Now that I've outed myself as a radical free thinker with that newfangled, revolutionary stance, let's get down to brass tacks, because I think a few things need to be addressed in the wake of Henry Morgentaler's death.

Everybody who didn't know who Morgentaler was probably does by now, if only because news travels fast on the internet and, to put it mildly, the man was a bit polarizing. Specifically, he had a thing about legalizing abortions here in the Great White North. More specifically, he thought it was a pretty keen idea and spent the majority of his life (when he wasn't busy surviving the Holocaust) lobbying for a woman's right to dictate what happens to her body. Bluntly, this fucked a lot of people right off.

Rob & Doug, Show Us Your Books Campaign Update

Welly-welly-well. It's been three days, and the Rob & Doug, Show Us Your Books Campaign has raised a grand total of $0. That's zero dollars. As in none. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Big huge rolling goose egg. The opposite of something. An existential abyss of unfundedness.

And that's cool. It would have been nice to raise some money for charity (and the campaign is still live for seven more days so there's still time to donate to CAMH). But this story is evolving so quickly that whether Rob and/or Doug bought the tape themselves seems more like a quaint historical mystery to a lot of people than an actual pressing public concern.

Besides, it did accomplish its secondary goal, which was to serve as pretty obvious clickbait for a brand new blog (which, given the fact that I was silenced by Gawker for daring to question their Crackstarter campaign, I don't feel the least bit bad about being forthright about, unlike them). The Rob & Doug, Show Us Your Books Campaign post has generated four times as many hits as any of the other posts on this blog. Considering the 2000 page hits we received in our first two days of existence, that's not too bad.

Still, I sure would like to see it work. I'm not exactly what you'd call optimistic about the prospect, but hey, it's fun to hope.

Brian Burke Once Gave A Handjob To Pavel Bure

At least that's a rumour I heard. Or maybe it's one I just made up. The point is it's on the internet now. Therefore I guess he has the right to serve notice to me online that he can sue me, right along with Poonerman and Slobberface.

No word on whether he got Pavel pregnant afterward.

Mr. Burke, the E-mail address I can be reached at is on the right side of this page. I await my notice that I'm being sued.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Banned From Gawker For Asking Them To Pay For The Rob Ford Tape Themselves, Even As A Loan

Up until a few of days ago, I was a fairly regular commenter on Gawker. Not obsessive or trollish about it, but I enjoy the site and its brethren (Deadspin, io9, etc.) and I make my stupid comments sometimes and then I go on with my life.

Well on Friday, after the mayor's press conference (the one where he says he doesn't use crack cocaine but fails to deny he ever had), Gawker put up a post calling him out for his parsing of words. Having already decided along with a lot of other people that if Ford hadn't bought the tape yet he was surely at least close to doing so (that smirk really gave it away for me), I put up a comment on the Gawker story addressing John Cook, the author as well as the editor who broke the story to begin with. I implored him to reach into Gawker Media's incredibly deep pockets and at least front the money for the tape if they could find the guys who have it. If they insisted on using other people's money, they could still get it back a few days later when the Crackstarter campaign was finished, but in the meantime the Fords might get their grubby, KFC grease-lathered fingers on it.

Promoted Post

"I Bought Hash From Doug Ford"

"We reflected on all the times we’d lined up behind a handful of teenagers and guys in their twenties at the picnic table where the Ford brothers (Rob was often present) sat while Doug conducted business, in the shade to the side of James Gardens’ small, easternmost parking lot. For a while we both simply enjoyed repeating the words: 'I bought hash from Doug Ford.' They sounded nostalgic and subversive at the same time."

Click here to read the whole story...

WANT TO CONTRIBUTE?

If you're interested in writing a post or several posts or a whole shitload of posts for this blog, then contact us at the E-mail address below with your pitch. Include some info about yourself that's interesting and some writing samples if you have any. We don't care even a little bit about your resume, so don't bother sending that. What we care about is talent and a strong voice.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR:

We're looking for posts about Toronto or relevant to Torontonians. Political opinions are good. Movie, show or restaurant reviews too. Rants are fine as long as they're cogent and not hateful (spite and snark are very much encouraged, however). We'll take anything from astute Toronto sports analyses to Sue-Ann Levy fan fiction. We want funny, biting, thought-provoking and insightful. We don't mind a little bit of crazy (but not, you know, psychotic). We are most assuredly queer-positive and anti-prejudice. We're not prudes or easily offended, so feel free to get a little blue. And this isn't a news site, at least not mainly, so don't worry about objectivity - if we don't like your take on something, we just won't publish it (hey, it's our blog, we can publish whatever we want). Inject your personality, throw in your relevant anecdotes if you want, write with your own voice. The best thing to do is to read as much of the blog as you can stomach. That should give you a pretty good idea of the style, the tone and the slant we're looking for.

WHAT WE'RE NOT LOOKING FOR:

Screeds about how awesome bicycles are (unless you have a really original take on them). Stories about the unsung beauty of subway stations. Posts detailing your ten favourite bands that feature a glockenspiel. There are several Toronto blogs and alt-weeklies out there that fawn over those things, and while they're great blogs we follow regularly, we have no interest in joining them. We're going for a little more edge here. Beyond that, we're pretty open, so long as what you're writing about, as mentioned, isn't hateful and is about Toronto or relevant to Toronto readers.

WHAT WE PAY:

Nothing. Yeah, that sucks, we know. But the fact is that this is an unmonetized blog. We won't be making money off of your hard work. There is no revenue at this point. If and when we get some page hits and that changes (fingers crossed), any revenue will be reinvested in the blog or split among contributors, so there could be cash in this one day. But we all know the shelf-lives of these things and the fickleness of the interwebs, so for right now, for us and for you, it's just a place to sound off and see your stuff in print and hopefully read by other people.

OTHER WAYS TO CONTRIBUTE:

News tips are good. Your mayor-smoking-crack video won't get $200,000 out of us or even a lot of exposure, but hey, we'll publish it and you'll get the added pleasure of putting our silly little site on the map. Commenting is also awesome. Comment the fuck out of our posts. We won't moderate too strenuously. We'll delete spam, obvious trolling, and anything racist or sexist or homophobic, but otherwise it's an open forum. We'll also publish your cool photos if you have any. By cool photos we don't mean that cool angle you got on the CN Tower just as the sun was coming up - again, there are plenty of places to see that stuff already - but interesting, unusual, funny, thought-provoking pictures of our city.

WHERE TO CONTACT US:

Here's the important part. For any and all of the above, as well as comments about the site, complaints about how much we suck, and the obligatory death threats we assume we'll receive, you can E-mail us here:

info@queenbathurst.com