PEPSI GOLD
Pepsi Gold in a sample cup. (Image source)Pepsi Gold is a new, limited edition cola being marketed specifically in countries where "soccer" football is popular, such as
Malaysia, obviously to tie in with the FIFA World Cup.
I think it's caffeine-free with a slight caramel taste.
Here's a Turkish commercial for it, featuring Claudia Schiffer.But it's not being marketed in North America, outside of Mexico.
Damnit, Pepsi is missing a golden opportunity by not soaking the American and Canadian airwaves to the saturation point with advertising.
Just think of some of the possible slogans:
"Pepsi Gold is Number One!"
"You Can't Spell Pepsi without 'P'."
"Pepsi Gold: You won't know what tangy flavor refreshment you're in for until you drink a sample of it for yourself!"
"Pepsi Gold: relieve yourself ...from the summer heat."
"Pepsi Gold: the perfect drink for all of your usual outdoor summer activities: watering the flowers, draining the tank, seeing that man about a horse, even watersports!"
"Wet yourself in the throat with Pepsi Gold."
"Squirt some Pepsi Gold into your mouth today."
"I have really, really got to go... and buy me some Pepsi Gold!"
"Pepsi Gold: So refreshing, you'll want to squeeze out every last drop from the bottle."
"Pepsi Gold... looks the same going in you as it does coming out!"
"Pepsi Gold: the perfect drink to spend a penny on!" (That one works better in Britain.)
"Pepsi Gold: In stores for just a wee time!" (Also better in Britain.)
"Pepsi Gold: Tastes Better than Calpis!" (That one's for Japan.)
"Pepsi Gold: La boisson gazeuse au couleur des pissenlits." (The dandelion-coloured soft drink.)
"Pepsi Gold: Feel the tingle!"
"Be a whiz: Drink Pepsi Gold!"
"Pepsi Gold: The golden shower in your throat."
"Pepsi Gold: Because the sight of yellow liquid in a phallic-shaped bottle is the most appetizing thing ever!"
And Hasbro should request that Pepsico should bring Pepsi Gold to North America, because they could cross-promote it with one of their own products:
Try Pepsi Gold in the Super-Soaker Oozinator: shower them with your tangy golden spray before you blast them in the face with your sticky white Bio-Ooze!
R.I.P. PATSY RAMSEY
Patsy Ramsey, a completely 100% innocent woman whose name is absolutely not synonymous with "matricide", has died of cancer at age 49.From CNN:
John and Patsy Ramsey, as they appeared in the South Park episode, "Butters' Very Own Episode".ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Patsy Ramsey, mother of slain 6-year-old JonBenet, died Saturday of ovarian cancer, her lawyer told CNN. She was 49.
She died about 3:30 a.m. at her father's house with her husband by her side, lawyer Lin Wood said. She was diagnosed with cancer in 1993 but was cancer-free for nine years until a relapse three years ago.
The unsolved killing of JonBenet in December 1996 put Patsy and John Ramsey, the girl's parents, in the spotlight.
A grand jury investigation into the death of the child beauty pageant winner ended without charges in 1999.
JonBenet's beaten and strangled body was found in the basement of the family home in Boulder, Colorado, the day after Christmas.
The Ramseys said an intruder committed the crime, but they remained the subject of suspicion and speculation.
She never was able to find the elusive "some Puerto Rican guy" who murdered her daughter.
Whenever I think of Patsy Ramsey, I'll always remember
those immortal words: "Paint... must paint... everything clean. Paint... must paint... everything clean... everything new... Ungh. Paaiint. Everything clean. Everything new. Paaiint. I don't think Daddy's shopping. I think Daddy's going out "wrestling" again. Paaiint. Paaiint. Must be made clean. New. Clean. Never be clean. Must... kill? The only way? Must kill Butters. Paaiint."
WHY DO GUYS NAMED "STEVE" LIKE TAKING PICTURES OF BUSES?
Check this out: some guy in Ottawa named "Steve" who is neither me nor Prime Minister Harper has started an entire Fotopic gallery of OC Transpo buses (and a few Hull/Gatineau STO buses) called
"Steve's Greater Ottawa Bus Page", with pretty much every type of bus still in service in the fleet, such as the
New Flyer Invero D40I and the
New Flyer D60LF articulated buses, having its own album. There is also
a historical OC Transpo bus album,
a couple of pictures of crashed buses, and
model buses custom-painted with OC Transpo paint schemes and paper buses! Neat!
Of course, I have a number of photos of OC Transpo buses, including a couple I've never displayed in this blog, in my own
"Ottawa Snapshots" album in my
Fotopic gallery.
NEPEAN AT NIGHT...
I tried my hand at night street photography when I took
that batch of pictures in downtown Ottawa the other week.
I thought I'd take the camera with me on a late evening trip to
Merivale Blockbuster.
Traffic lights at the corner of Meadowlands and Tiverton, with the playing field of Parkwood Hills school in the background.
The intersection of Meadowlands and Chesterton, with the bright lights of Merivale Road in the distance.
I got a decent headlight streak.
Looking backwards (towards the east) at an Ottawa OC Transpo Bus, which I think is another New Flyer Invero, dropping someone off on Meadowlands between Grant Carman and Chesterton. This was my only successful photograph of a bus that evening.
The parking lot of Merivale Place (the strip mall which has
HMV as well as Winners, Home Outfitters, and others) with the Scotiabank with the drive-through ATM and the Beer Store visible.
I'm a bit disappointed that lighted sign panels have a tendency to blur, so you can't see the Scotiabank logo.
Woo-hoo, made it to Merivale Road!
The Merivale Esso station, whose sign also gets blurry when photographed at night.
Ooh, the price of regular gas at Merivale Esso is down 5.4 cents compared to what it was on
June 5th!
Unfortunately, I spent so much time taking pictures (since, in lieu of having a tripod, I had to steady the camera using objects rooted in the ground) that they were just locking up Blockbuster when I got there.
But here's a night shot of Blockbuster Video anyway, with Speedy Muffler and Merivale McDonald's in the background.
This shot came out quite nicely, with a tanker from Queensway Tank Lines replenishing the Esso station's underground tanks, and a store called
Stay Organized, which specializes in custom storage units, can also be seen in the Merivale Fair strip mall at the corner of Merivale and Meadowlands.
I find the smell of gasoline being pumped from a tanker oddly satisfying. I mean, obviously, I smell gasoline fumes when I fill the lawnmower, but it's not nearly as intense a smell. What I smelled that night when I took this picture was so overpowering that it wasn't diluted by any other smells in the immediate area.
A shot of the Meadowlands-facing side and drive-through menu of the dual-bannered Wendy's and Tim Horton's restaurant that I'm especially proud of, because I got a perfect red tail-light streak twinned with a headlight streak! And the restaurant looks pretty sharp for a night photo too!
Streaks of light made by an OC Transpo bus driving through the intersection of Meadowlands and Tiverton. The reflections are on the top of the utility box that, I presume, controls the traffic lights, which I was using as an impromptu tripod.
There's nothing beyond the Tiverton intersection that's lit well enough to be worth attempting to take a picture of, and the batteries in the Ricoh Caplio camera were pretty much dead.
PIERRE BERNARD'S RECLINER OF RAGE!
At long, long last, the first real new "Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage" segment on NBC's
Late Night with Conan O'Brien since
Late Night graphic designer Pierre Bernard Jr. ranted about
the expanding waistlines of Froot of the Loom underpants on the episode which aired the night of Thursday, November 3
rd, 2005, nearly eight whole months ago.
I was beginning to think that they retired the segment for good and had even started writing my own inferior ersatz facsimile "Recliner of Rage" entries (though
my Hot Wheels rant from Sunday was a pretty decent imitation, if I do say so myself). But it's back.
I taped it, just missing out the usual "But before we get to that, there's a serious matter I'd like to discuss. Let's face it folks, there's a lot of anger in America today, between the war in Iraq, rising gas prices, and the debate on global warming. And there's one man who is particularly angry, our own graphic designer, Pierre Bernard".
Conan: ...there's Pierre Bernard, Pierre says... (applause)... yeah, you can see from that photo he's enraged. Pierre says he knows how America feels... he's ready to articulate our anger for us, so here he is once again in a little segment we like to call "Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage".
Singer: PIERRE BERNARD'S RECLINER OF RAGE!
Conan: Hey there, Pierre, are you comfortable and angry?
Pierre: Comfortable and furious, Conan.
Conan: Then go ahead and speak for America.
Pierre: Okay, here goes.
For the last couple of years, I've been thinking seriously about starting a Bobblehead collection. I finally decided to do it after receiving a free Empire Carpet man bobblehead in Chicago. I called up a place in Pennsylvania called Lazer Illusions that sells both hologram images and Bobbleheads. The owner, Howard, didn't realize how serious I was. He assumed I just wanted a few Bobbleheads, but I bought over sixty... including Pinhead from Hellraiser, Quick Draw McGraw, Baba Looey, the old man with the leg lamp from A Christmas Story, Sammy Davis Jr., and several versions of Betty Boop... I'm a big Betty Boop fan.
The main reason I'm fascinated by Bobbleheads is because of the way their heads bobble, so you can imagine my shock when I discovered that some of the Bobbleheads I ordered had bobbling bodies instead of bobbling heads.
And it was especially true for the overweight characters like Barney Rubble, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, and Muttley from Wacky Races. Their bellies bobbled, but their heads remained completely stationary.
For God's sake, they're called "Bobble Heads", not "Bobble Bodies". Frankly, I find the whole situation very upsetting.
Bottom line, America?
(Adjusts chair upright and points to the camera.)
All Bobbleheads should have bobbling heads, and if not, the packaging of Bobbleheads should clearly indicate which part of the (bobbly...) bodies will bobble.
(Audience laughs and applauds.)
Conan: Thank you, Pierre...
(Audience continues.)
...thank you, Pierre, I'm sure there are at least... I'm sure there are at least two or three other guys in America who know exactly what you are talking about.
Pierre: Keep the faith, Amigos.
Conan: Alright, Pierre...
Singer: PIERRE BERNARD'S RECLINER OF RAGE!
Conan: We'll take a break, when we come back, John Cena's here, stick around, we'll see you in a second.
I hope we get another "Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage" segment before 2007.
Speaking of geeky hobbies...
Here are a bunch more Hot Wheels Ferrari pics! Because you all love them so much!
I was trying to recreate my famous
"Little F-355, Big F-355" photo, using the "Little F-355" (1:18 scale) from the original photo to stand in for the "Big F-355", and the "Little F-355" is being portrayed by the tiny 1:108 scale mini Hot Wheels Ferrari Testarossa.
Four Hot Wheels Ferraris of different scales lined up vertically.
The tiny 1:108 scale Hot Wheels Ferrari Testarossa, photographed ultra-close-up.
Japanese mascot characters on regular-sized (1:64 scale) Hot Wheels! Ryo-Ohki from the anime
Tenchi Muyo/
Tenchi Universe (and
Pretty Sammy/
Magical Project S and now
Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club) on a purple late 1980s Corvette convertible and Froggy from the Sega Dreamcast game
Sonic Adventure on a Ferrari Testarossa (512TR).
(Scottish "Fat Bastard"-type accent)
DRIVE, DRIVE INTO MY MOUTH, WEE LITTLE FERRARIS!
Alright, a Ferrari F-50 on my driveway!
That "forced perspective" shot of the 1:18 scale Ferrari F-50 would probably be a little more convincing if our driveway didn't look like it was as wide as a football field.
Two Ferraris and a DeLorean on the mile-wide streets of giant suburbia.
The Ferrari F-50 swerving to avoid the DeLorean, which must be driving at 88 miles per hour.
A re-enactment of what
I saw on Monday evening but didn't have the camera ready to photograph, the air intake vents on the driver's side door of what was presumably a Ferrari Testarossa.
Labels: Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage
STORMY EVENING AND THE GLEN.
My sister, Alison, invited us to a one-day-late Father's Day dinner at
the Glen Scottish Restaurant on Hazeldean Road in Kanata on Monday evening, which was probably the last opportunity we'd have to all have dinner together before the baby's born at the end of this month or the beginning of July.
We left the house at about 6:45 p.m., which is actually fairly early for us to eat dinner.
Just as we were leaving to get to the restaurant, I spotted one of those rabbits again, though, since he wasn't distracted by noisy children this time around, he spotted me too and kept his distance.
Within a minute or two of pulling out of our driveway, the brief-but-intense thunderstorm passed over Nepean, and, by the time we got to the intersection of Meadowlands and Woodroffe, near the Centrepointe town hall complex, it was pelting down. My father drove onto Northgate and then stopped the car for several minutes, because the rain was coming down faster than the windshield wipers could wipe it away. We even got a little bit of hail. About seven minutes after we pulled over, the rain had mellowed down just enough for us to continue driving.
It was still raining when we were driving west along Baseline, but, by the time we had gotten to Richmond Road and Bell's Corners in western Nepean, the rain had turned to drizzle and the midsummer's evening sunlight was already beginning to break through the clouds, giving me an opportunity to take quite a vivid shot of a rainbow against the backdrop of a smoke grey cloud.
There are a few areas where you can see the grass refracted through the drips of water on the Sonata's windows, which would normally bother me, except, here, it gives the affected area the look of a painting.
This shot would have made a great desktop, except I took it on digital instead of film, and you can easily see some banding in the clouds. If anyone wants it as a desktop background,
here's the original 1280 x 960 jpeg file.
Here I am in the backseat of our Hyundai Sonata, wearing my Arsenal Football Club jersey (that's "football" as in "soccer", for those of you in Rio Linda).
I mainly own it because of the
Sega Dreamcast logo on the chest (below what's visible in this picture), but it's also quite appropriate apparel for FIFA World Cup season. (The England national team jersey I have would be even more appropriate, but it was in the wash.)
Also, it's fun to say, in a mock British accent, "Hello, I play football for ARSE-nal! I like ARSE-nal! Are you looking at my ARSE-nal jersey?"
The rear end of a City of Ottawa OC Transpo articulated bus, on Richmond Road between Nepean and Kanata, in the wooded "High Deer" area.
And here's our Hyundai Sonata in front of the Glen Scottish Restaurant itself.
I apologize that I felt the need to obscure our license plate number using "mosaic" in Photoshop. Of course, I always leave everyone else's license plate number intact when I post pictures on the Internet, but that's because I like being an ARSE-nal.
Here I am with a few mock Glasgow street signs, with sayings that I think are either Gaellic words or compounds of English words pronounced with a thick Sideshow Willy Scottish brogue. They had the English translations of "YABAMPOTYE", "AWAYANBILEYIRHEID", and "YIRBUMSOOTHIWINDAE" written below the words, but I forgot what they were and they're illegible in this photo.
It sure is hard to try reading the menu whilst snapping a picture of yourself in a darkish room.
Eh, I wasn't feeling adventurous, so I just ate what I had
the last time I went to The Glen, lightly-seasoned breaded chicken filets, onion rings, and fries. A whole plate full of fried food, not exactly healthy, but I didn't have dessert so I'm slightly less of a fatass than I would otherwise be today.
It was tasty, with the fries being not too greasy and not too dry, but I'm not a food critic and don't have much else to say about it.
Not too bad a photo of my sister, though I mainly included this picture here to show the overall Scottish pub ambience of the Glen.
After I was finished eating, I wasn't really interested in dessert, so I excused myself in order to take a few photos of whatever I could find outside.
A Mercury Grand Marquis car advertising the
Kunstadt Sports store, which is right next door to the Glen. I took this photo mainly for the
Flickr "Ads on Wheels" photo pool, but I won't be able to post it until next month since I reached my 20 megabyte monthly limit on my free account with the
Champs-Elysees crayon drawing.
An OC Transpo bus on Hazeldean. According to Cats On Mars's
KinFreon, it's a
Invero from
New Flyer.
Finally, my quest to get a picture of a City Of Ottawa Ford Crown Victoria police cruiser has borne some fruit, though it's fuzzy and it was going too fast for me to be able to get a better shot.
They had the eastbound half of Hazeldean blocked off at the Burger King at the corner of Castlefrank for some kind of roadwork. I don't know if they were resurfacing it or something along those lines, but I did get a few pictures of this Mack Street Sweeper/Street cleaner thingie.
By the way... "Castlefrank". That always makes me snicker like a comic book geek (instead of the anime geek that I am) because it's
the Punisher's name (Frank Castle) backwards.
I went back in and snapped a few more pictures, but nothing I'll bore you with here.
It was a lovely night, but it was a work night for my sister's boyfriend, so they couldn't stay out too late.
As you can see, they drive a Honda SUV. And it's a recent model too. I guess those annoying
Mr. Opportunity commercials with the animated prick actually worked on someone.
The postscript of the evening was, as we were driving back home, whilst on Meadowlands between Woodroffe and Merivale I saw out the rear door window on the other side of the car a glimpse of the door of a car travelling in the opposite direction. A red car door. With a row of either six or eight air intake vents in it, of the sort that I have seen a lot of recently in toy form and in the video game
Out Run 2006: Coast to Coast. Crap, it was the first actual Ferrari that I had seen in ages, and I didn't get a good look at it, but I believe that it was none other than the 512TR Testarossa, and I didn't have the camera ready to take a picture, though it was too dark at that point for the camera to get a non-blurry shot of a moving car from a car moving in the opposite direction, so the lack of camera readiness was moot. I wonder if this means that there is a Ferrari owner somewhere in the western Ottawa suburbs, or whether it was just staying in town for Canadian Grand Prix week, since staying in Ottawa and driving early in the morning to Montreal has got to be a lot more cheaper than trying to find a place to stay in Montreal this week.
Or maybe it was none other than Masato Sanjouin a.k.a.
Nephrite (Maxfield Stanton/Neflite in the old
Sailor Moon dub). Hey, it's not that far-fetched... he could be Canadian. The mineral Nephrite, also known as
Actinolite, is primarily mined in... Eastern Ontario! Maybe he's my neighbour!
VARIOUS VICARIOUS BRUSHES WITH FAME....
My brother, John, works at a post-production studio in Vancouver that proccesses film, synchronizes it with the sound, and does some other of those tasks too minor for him to get credited individually at the end of the movie.
Occasionally, they'll have stars drop by, either to offer encouragement, or, more likely, just because the star wants to get his first glimpse at how he looks on celluloid (since, contrary to popular belief, not all movies are shot digital these days, mainly because not all film production companies have yet been able to afford the new digital equipment, though sometimes it's an artistic decision as some directors still prefer the granular look of film; the downside for the actors when something is shot on film is that they have to wait until it's developed to see how the shots came out, compared to digital, when they can see themselves within seconds of shooting a scene).
One famous actor who recently dropped by was Ben Stiller from
Zoolander,
There's Something About Mary,
Meet the Parents, and one of my all-time favourite movies,
The Royal Tenenbaums. who was in Vancouver to film his scenes for the film
Night at the Museum, a comedy set to be released in November about museum exhibits at New York's Museum of Natural History coming to life because of a curse and wreaking havoc, and some historical figures like Atilla the Hun and Theodore Roosevelt also come alive somehow.
Unfortunately, Ben Stiller didn't visit on my brother's shift, so John didn't get to see him.
But I think my brother will be able to catch another famous visitor, certainly the biggest (ha-ha) celebrity that'll probably ever drop by (but, even though he's big, he's spry).
Jorge Garcia as Hugo "Hurley" Reyes on ABC's Lost.Yep, John will hopefully get to meet
Jorge Garcia, who plays Hugo "Hurley" Reyes on
Lost. I'm not sure why Garcia is in Vancouver. Obviously, not for
Lost, which is filmed on Oahu, Hawaii, and the new season of which doesn't even begin shooting until, I believe, the end of July. The Internet Movie Database indicates that Garcia is also in an upcoming movie called
Sweetzer, but it doesn't give any information on where that one is being filmed.
According to
Garcia's trivia page, he was in a video with Mr. T called "Recouping". If this information is true, and if it's the same one I found on YouTube, Jorge Garcia must be that
young boy who unconvincingly falls on the sidewalk, and then a fat guy laughs at him, so "Doctor T" resets time and, instead of being a laughing stock, "recoups" by breakdancing . I can't see enough of the kids face for me to be able to determine whether it's really Jorge, or whether someone is trying to pass off an
"absoludicrous" fabrication as fact.
There's an
official Jorge Garcia site called "Pronounced Horhay" (since the actor, of Chilean descent, has a rather unconventional name for someone born in Omaha, Nebraska), but it hasn't been updated since last August.
Also, remember my old
Japanese pen-pal turned model and actress?
I recently found out that she was in a Japanese horror movie that I've actually seen, in a small but pivotal role as a ghost of someone killed by whatever hard-to-understand evil entity that was going around killing people using a certain modern convenience that I won't identify here, as it would identify the movie which would identify my former pen-pal who doesn't want me to "name drop" her here, and I respect her wishes. (It's not any of the
Ring films or
Ju-On/
The Grudge or
Dark Water.)
I'm almost tempted to rent that movie again just to see her and hear her voice now that I know it was her, but the movie it is is typical of all too many Japanese horror movies in that it gets too weird and inexplicable halfway through, and it's one of many Japanese horror movies I've seen that has a climax set in a hospital or asylum that has been abandoned for years, which is illogical considering that land is at a premium in urban areas in Japan and, in the real world, the hospital would either have been demolished soon after closing or refurbished into condos.
In the "glad I looked it up before writing about it department", my second cousin,
Julien Lecat, who had previously directed the "making of" documentary for Jean-Pierre Jeunet's
A Very Long Engagement1 (
Un long dimanche de fiançailles), was now working on some large budget film with pirates and treasure, which my mother had led me to believe was a little movie called
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest.
But I looked him up, and he's actually shooting the behind-the-scenes footage for a French film called
Trésors, an action comedy loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson's
Treasure Island, being filmed in Budapest, England, and Thailand (damn, wish I could have tagged along on that last location... I want to take a million pictures of elephants in Chiang Mai!) by director Alain Berbérian and starring Vincent Rottiers as Jim Hawkins and Gérard Jugnot as Long John Silver. (Julien Lecat himself is listed as having a bit part as a fisherman in peril.)
Here's a video from France's TF1 that shows some behind-the-scenes footage on the set in Thailand (oh, it's in Krabi, which is located at pretty much the opposite end of the country from Chiang Mai, but I'm sure there are still some elephants to be seen there). I'm not sure if any of that footage is Julien's, but the movie still looks like a lot of fun regardless.
Julien is also directing the "making of" for a movie called
Truands (
Gangsters), a crime film from director Frédéric Schoendoerffer filmed in France and Senegal.
1Which, unfortunately, I still haven't gotten around to seeing. When it was briefly in theatres over in this part of the world, I was in the process and/or aftermath of moving to Ontario, and I'm not sure that I've ever seen the DVD of it on the shelves of Merivale Blockbuster Video.
AVENUE DES CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES... CRAYOLA'd!
Here's a crayon drawing that I decided to keep under wraps completely here until it was done, since it's a drawing that works better as a "whole".
This is a crayon drawing I did based on a photo of the sidewalk of Paris's Avenue des Champs Elysees which I took on Bastille Day weekend in July 1997. (
Original Avenue des Champs-Élysées photo.)
It's my second attempt to do a serious crayon drawing as an adult, and it took a fair bit longer for me to do than
my crayon drawing of London's Piccadilly Circus.
It's crudely drawn, yet quite detailed. I didn't really attempt to draw faces on most of the people because the photo it's based on was taken at twilight, and I can't really make any faces out in that picture either.
It's also a little more distorted than my other drawings, since I decided that I'd do the rough pencils completely freehand, without measuring and scaling any key lines the way I did for my other drawings.
I felt that I had a vague Impressionistic vibe when I was drawing it.
I'm satisfied with this picture, but, the next time I do a crayon drawing, I'm going to base it on a photo that's a little less "crowded", and I'll try and draw on a larger piece of card.
Yes, it is yet another drawing that I've done that features McDonald's Golden Arches logo, but it isn't as prominent as it is at Piccadilly Circus.
My Drawings gallery is now up to a dozen pictures!
The same drawing, hosted on a couple of different servers for Google Image search reasons.
This is a crayon drawing I did based on a photo of the sidewalk of Paris's Avenue des Champs Elysees which I took on Bastille Day weekend in July 1997.
This is a crayon drawing I did based on a photo of the sidewalk of Paris's Avenue des Champs Elysees which I took on Bastille Day weekend in July 1997.
This is a crayon drawing I did based on a photo of the sidewalk of Paris's Avenue des Champs Elysees which I took on Bastille Day weekend in July 1997.
This is a crayon drawing I did based on a photo of the sidewalk of Paris's Avenue des Champs Elysees which I took on Bastille Day weekend in July 1997.
STEVE BRANDON'S PIERRE BERNARD'S RECLINER OF RAGE!
(Apologies to graphic designer/comedy icon Pierre Bernard Jr. and to lawyers for NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien.)
Hello there, Steve... are you comfortable and angry?
Comfortable and furious, imaginary Conan!
Well, then, why don't you go ahead and speak for America... I mean, Canada?
Okay, here goes.
Recently, I have had the urge to
photograph more Ferraris. Unfortunately, there are not nearly as many opportunities to photograph Ferraris in Ottawa as there were in Montreal, so I've improvised a new hobby, taking "macro" photographs of model Ferraris made by Mattel's Hot Wheels for adult toy car collectors. I have both 1:18 scale Ferraris and 1:43 scale Ferraris, but, for my purposes, I've come to prefer photographing the 1:43 scale Ferraris as Ferraris of that scale are small enough that you can use regular-sized photographs as backdrops.
Most of the photos I have taken so far have been of the 1:43 scale Ferrari F-40, which is a lovely model car to take pictures of as, even though it is less than half the scale of a 1:18 scale model, it still has an impressive amount of detail for a model of such a small size. It even has detail painted onto the seat belts!
It is a very nice model car, but I want a little more variety with these "model car/photo backdrop" photos. I also have a Hot Wheels Ferrari 512M, the early 1990s variant of the Testarossa, that is of the same scale, but it doesn't have nearly the amount of detail of the 1:43 scale F-40 model, and the passenger side mirror was broken off when I got it for Christmas a few years ago, so I only like photographing it on the driver's side.
On Saturday, I walked down to Merivale and checked out both
Toys R' Us and
Zellers in hopes of buying one or two more 1:43 scale Hot Wheels Ferrari models. I checked the shelves at both stores, but, not only did I not see any 1:43 scale Ferraris, I didn't see any 1:18 scale Ferraris either!
There were a few Ferraris that were regular 1:64 scale Hot Wheels cars, but those are just the track toys meant for little kids that don't have realistically-detailed interiors, wheel rims, rubber tires, and paint jobs.
I went on the Internet and discovered that, while Mattel is still making a handful of the big 1:18 scale Ferraris, like the Enzo, as part of the Hot Wheels "Elite" line, they no longer seem to have a license to make 1:43 scale model Ferraris, and, if I want to buy a 1:43 scale Ferrari, they are now made by an Italian company called
BBR Models.
From
the pictures I have seen, the 1:43 scale model Ferraris made by BBR Models appear to be even more detailed than even the 1:43 scale Ferrari F-40 from Hot Wheels. The paint jobs look fantastic. The downside is that BBR appears to be a model car company mainly for the ultra-serious enthusiast, and, as such, their models wouldn't be sold at a general merchandise retailer like Toys R' Us or Zellers, and they'd probably cost a bit more than the Hot Wheels kind. I'll have to seek these out at a model car shop, and I don't even know if there are any such retailers in the Ottawa area. The closest authorized retailers listed at the BBR Model site are
Mini Grid and
Prestige Auto Art & Gift Gallery, both in Toronto!
Bottom line, America? Mattel's Hot Wheels should renew the license to make 1:43 scale model Ferraris, so that I can buy them for cheap within walking distance of my house in Nepean!
Ah, thank you, Steve... I'm sure that there are three or four toy car collectors out there who know exactly what you are talking about!
Also, I went through a box of stuff, mostly belonging to my brother John, that hadn't been unsealed since we moved that was at the back of the storage area in the laundry/utilities room and pulled out all of the Hot Wheels stuff I can find, including several Ferraris.
Here's a "family portrait" of sorts, showing four different scales of Hot Wheels Ferraris: From left to right: a Micro Machines-scale (but from Mattel, not Galoob) Ferrari Testarossa (512 TR), a 1:64 scale (regular Hot Wheels size) Ferrari Testarossa, a 1:43 scale Ferrari F-40, and a 1:18 scale Ferrari F-355. 
Since I was out anyway, I went to
the Merivale Best Buy and bought volume three of the
Ah My Goddess! TV series, which has the proper animated debut
1 of
Marller (Mara), the mischevous demon girl who tries to cause as much unhappiness... okay, actually mild-but-goofy unpleasantness, for Keiichi Morisato and Belldandy as possible.
As much as I love Kosuke Fujishima's
Oh My Goddess (ああっ女神さまっ) manga (at least up to about volume 20, after which it's pretty good, but not as charming as it was before), I'm finding that situations that worked well on paper kind of drag a bit on the television screen, and the animated version of Belldandy is still much more of a dormat than her manga counterpart. But the first episode with Marller, who is about the funniest character after Peorth, comes the closest of all of the episodes I've seen so far of replicating the appeal of the manga on the television screen, with her turning Keiichi into a motorscooter (he wouldn't mind so much if it was a BMW motorcycle, not just a Vespa).
I'd be enjoying the show more if I knew there was the possibility of seeing Peorth before the second season, which Media Blasters/Anime Works announced that it had licensed last weekend (kind of a "Well, duh!" inevitability that they'd license it... I don't think that cash-strapped AnimEigo was even in the running). But, alas, Peorth only has a silent cameo in the final episode of the first season (and you don't even see her face).
1 That's not counting mini-Marller's cameos in Adventures of the Mini-Goddess, of course. But that's more of a parody version of herself.
