Fooling Around in Kensington Market

It was a nutty day in Kensington Market in Toronto when Noam, Moshe, Tamara, Jeff and I ran around terrorizing passerby and putting on costumes.

I got burned by the Jerusalem Post

OK, it's not a huge deal, but I just got a little burned by JPost. I was interviewed regarding my feelings about the recent Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart interview with Israel's Dan Gillerman, and out of all the 'good' stuff I said, they picked out a tiny tid bit that didn't reflect the gist of my message. It just made me sound like I don't have a sense of humour, plus a ton of good critiques I made were left out. But that's alright. I understand this is how the press works, and it's still fun just to see my name in JPost.

The article: www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152804871&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Watch the whole Daily Show clip here: www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=85079

From the Vault: Pics from my old PC

Avi and Barry wait for a much needed haircut

Every now and then "From the Vault" will pop up, displaying interesting elements from the past that I never got around to blogging for reasons I will likely never be able to explain. They are all of some interest, and it will mainly be comprised of cool photos, ancient text, and vintage vids.

A mass Yoga demonstration at the University of Toronto in the summer of 2003. Woody Harrelson led the event. There was public nudity.



The late Stanley admires his portrait. He will be missed.



July 2003: This cute dog lives at an art gallery in a small American town.

Eli and his identical twin hang out in G. Ross Lord park, Toronto.

Final paper

Avi studies Baudrillard in France.

I'm working on my final paper for the year, and it's a doozy. It even involves Jean Baudrillard, the man who inspired a lot of the Matrix movies through his exploration of the 'real' and the 'hyper-real'. It's really dense stuff, but I'm starting to get my mind around it. Once you get into it, it's like a drug.

Here's the first couple lines from my paper. If my TA runs my paper through Google, he'll find this and start scratching his head. But you know - a simulation of a Baudrillard essay would have made the late Jean Baudrillard really happy. He was into that. He passed away last month.

An excerpt from my paper:

Hayden White and Jean Baudrillard both posit theoretical assumptions regarding the representation of reality. In the essays “The Orders of Simulacra” and “Simulacra and Simulations”, Baudrillard offers the opposing binaries of reality and simulation in order to make his argument for the loss of ‘the real’. In “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality”, Hayden White opts to employ the exploration of the presence or absence of narrative in order to discern the existence of ‘meaning’ within a given discourse. Both authors strive to outline a means of representing an objective reality based on ....