Historicist: Life in Wartime
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Photo by Tim Shore/BlogTO
It's not something that Toronto sees very often: last night at about 4:30 a.m., four cars made a fast turn off of Argyle and onto Ossington, racing south, as one man in a BMW hung out the window from his waist up, automatic gun in hand, firing about ten shots at another car. BlogTO has photos of Ossington this morning.
No injuries have yet been reported, nor any official word from the police yet given, but one Torontoist reader (who, other than their username, wants to remain anonymous) was walking on Ossington, saw the bulk of the fight, and sent us the surreal story of what they saw happen. It follows after the fold.
Say what you will about hipsters, those sartorially cagy accusatory nonconformist whiners, but they don't come without their perks, one of which is that the number of wild-west style shootings in a given area is usually inversely proportionate to the number of said pseudo-bohos. When the girls and galleries move in, the goons with guns get gone, if you will allow me. So when I finished shooting a hip hop show that had run late early Saturday morning, and called it a wrap, I decided to take advantage of one of the few nice nights this summer—and forego use of my Metropass—and walk the trek from Queen and Bathurst up to Oz and Dundas.Having just recently moved into my new apartment in that 'hood (straddling the Queen West, the Gallery District, and Little What's-Its-Name, yay!), I expected an uneventful walk, along which I could practice my tactical movement skills weaving through the inevitable veritable obstacle course of drunken scenesters I knew was coming. And so, having almost finished the aforementioned gauntlet as I neared the cigar factory on Ossington just south of Dundas, I was feeling good overall, generally at peace with stuff, certainly not expecting the curve ball about to be sent sailing squarely my way by pitcher McFate.
When it started—POP-POP-POP-POP—in rapid succession, I thought "my dear, dreadful baking accident in Venezia?" But I had to reevaluate this outlook quickly as four cars began screeching around the corner from Argyle south onto Ossington. With a bad leg injury—an ugly hangover from August of '07—I could not flee the man hanging out of the BMW, second in succession in the depravity parade, with firearm-a-blazin', so I kind of stood and drank it all in with a flank of terrified bewilderment.
I made eye contact with the gunman for a few seconds—that was surreal. "Keep your eyes on the prize slinger!" I should have shouted, but this is an afterthought; at the time I was as busy as a bee avoiding strays. The firing continued as the mad panoply continued south in the direction of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
Sadly, I couldn't return fire with my DSLR, as my Compact Flash card was gorged on paid-for concert pics. So I hid in an alley, called up a friend, walked home, finished my Jerk Chicken and Rice and Peas, and, in the mood for a long chat, called up the boys in blue.
From that point on the only other morsel of note is that I pointed out two shell casings missed by the Sirs while I attempted to give my statement and was not impressed by the general handling of the scene—but take that with a grain of salt from a social libertarian who isn't paid for that kind of work. After my return to the scene I resumed what I would now refer to as my protracted safari home, the odyssey of a Torontonian. Once en domus I fired up my vapourizer, took some time to imbibe and reflect, and crashed, crashed hard.
For the record I slept quite soundly. I still think Toronto is an awfully safe place, and I'll be making an even longer walk home tonight (if just to show McFate a little spite).
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In other news, Toronto gets the street cred its craved for so long.
Well, i think I know why this chap's decided to remain anonymous. I'm glad no one got shot.
wow, that was the most excessive retelling ever. your not writing a short story, you're recounting a crime...
no, i am writing a short story. but even still, what does it mean to 'recount a crime' if not to tell a short story? even a witness statement is a short story. i think it would be pretty hard to avoid telling a short story. i wrote is as a short story purposely. and fairly erratically, yes excessively, maybe even a little pretentiously. even worked in a few literary illusions, pretty ridiculous.
Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary
recount [riˈkaunt] verb
to tell (a story etc) in detail
Example: He recounted his adventures.
ahhh the lack of sleep!
allusions, it.
as it appears above, its basically shitty nabokov
I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the above to be an impenetrable fog of words.
Then again I'm illiterate.
And instead "pop-pop" you could have used some better onomatopoeia. For example:
"BLACKA-BLACKA-BLACKA"
or
"BLAP BLAP BLAP MOTHERFUCKA WHAT?"
Listen to some bone thugs...they really know how to tell just how hard these streets are...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFjR0g13sVI
We're looking at this the wrong way. Instead of criticizing the choice of words or writing style, we should be nominating the single best phrase from this 'panoply' of verbosity.
My vote clearly goes to '... certainly not expecting the curve ball about to be sent sailing squarely my way by pitcher McFate.'
Completely golden.
you've got the right idea mach.
this piece of purposely poor penning was not written to be taken seriously.
it was a whimsical tale of folly indeed!
i came away wishing the narrator the worst
"Pitcher McFate" HAHAHAHA
I guess we gotta give credit to the moron for being able to press shift + F7 in Microsoft Word.
mcfate is from nabokov, who also uses it facetiously, you dumb fuck.
also, i use a mac and haven't picked up microsoft word yet. i'll take the credit tho.
why would an article on a shooting be written as a joke piece? am I not getting something?
I didn't think it was funny—I took it as an honest recounting of what the person saw, albeit totally downplayed and relaxed. It's not how I would have retold a story about a gun fight, but I'm, uh, not sure why this turned into a fight over a witness's prose.
I don't think it's a fight over prose so much as confusion over the way the topic was handled - honestly, the writing comes across as sarcastic and attempting at humour, as well as being generally annoying. I was just surprised that Torontoist would present such a sarcastic take on something like a shooting.
I forgot that since Nabokov had used the word "McFate" that it legitimises a third grader phrases like "pitcher McFate". I never liked Nabokov anyway.
okay, maybe it's partly a fight over shitty prose.
Doesn't the god-awful writing give it away? Our anonymous mystery witness is clearly Rosie Dimanno!
Truly, the queen of journalism.
To be fair, how many of you (of us) have been involved in a completely random high-speed drive-by shooting? If the narrator's choice is to play it off as casually as possible, that's fair - I imagine that it was, in some way, a rather traumatic experience and rather than act hysterical or grim, s/he chose to approach it like this. I would probably do the same.
That doesn't stop it from being completely hilarious, but the vitriol's unnecessary. I was confused by the matching of topic and language, but ultimately it was the highlight of my news day. Unconventional and mildly inappropriate isn't necessarily terrible.
Yeah, why wasnt't the random witness to this a really good writer? (that was sarcasm...)
wasn't
According to BlogTO, "Ossington between Argyle and Humbert is roped off by police tape this morning."
Humbert. As in Humbert Humbert, the "unreliable narrator" of Nabokov's Lolita, right?
I think I just got a literary reference, people. What do I win?
Ah! Skippy that would have been a good one to throw in there with the mess, I've noticed that little detail before myself but it didn't pop up in the heat of writing that little ditty.
And as pertains the writing of the ditty: if I was looking for some positive reinforcement I wouldn't have opened a piece appearing on a site heavily frequented by hipsters by flagrantly insulting uh... said pseudo-bohos. I knew it would rub a few of yew (look up the definition of yew) kool cats the wrong way, but wow! So let me respond to a few of the more base and inarticulate comments/commenters, and offer a bit of an apologia to the more sensible.
First off know this: worse than a hack writer, worse by far, is a hack critic. I mean, why is it that the most amateur and simpleton critics of anything are always the most opinionated and polemical?
One of you particularly stands out - antiboy. "I never liked Nabokov anyway." Ok, wow. Actually, I just cannot restrain myself there... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! YOU CUTE LITTLE NOODLEHEAD! Point taken. I never really got the big deal with Kafka. Tolstoy? Meh. And Whitman was just too wishy washy... Judging by your other comment I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you're a highschool kid, probably an above average one, who borrowed the thesaurus comment from his english teacher, and still has a lot to learn. Pick a tense, stick with it, and don't worry, you can't hurt Nab.
matty - don't mock what you don't understand. Yeah, rap is crap, but hiphop is totally different and is up to some very righteous pursuits. Maybe watch this youtube vid instead, kid. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNCT9D0C5Pk
amy s - my scenester sense in tingling strongest with you, but you seem reasonable. Know that after that crazy shit went down I was pretty blown away. I thought it was probably going to be a pretty big story in the press; maybe it just seemed like that because I was 15 feet from the insanity. I figured it would be blown up and sensationalized in a big way, and my first priority was to circumvent the hysterical bickering I anticipated apropos 'Summer of the Gun', and other garbage. So there is my motivation terminus ante quem. It all looks pretty clearly unnecessary terminus post quem, but hindsight is 20/20 right? Regardless, it looks as though I was successful in that, as I don't see any of the classist/racist/otherist comments which I thought would be popping up. I think David Topping can at least attest to my dharmic motivation, my pia desideria (... just kidding with the relapse, relax). You particularly should remember that bit about hack critics. And I mean, who of anyone on here has the right to criticize my creative product in that mode? When you do that you look simple, pigheaded, and just plain dumb. I mean come on! Less hyperbole, more substance, if u wanna be like that.
To those of you criticizing my choice of prose: lets start by establishing that its my choice of prose, it isn't my usual prose (although it is close to my debate prose I guess, oddly enough) and its a long way from prosaic. I wrote that about 7 hours after the fact, after 4.5 hours of sleep. And editing works wonders - I did no editing, proofreading, barely reread the thing, I wanted it out. For the record, the most painful line in there is a toss-up between 'Dreadful baking accident in Venezia?' and 'Keep your eyes on the prize, slinger!' Overall though it isn't bad for pure improv, and also 'McFate' is fucking GREAT.
Machinations, you make a good point about humour as a coping mechanism - I hadn't considered that. But I guess its paradoxically always easiest to forget to self-psychoanalyze at the most crucial moments.
Also for the record, I apologize for nothing I said, and VIDI VENI VICI YOU FUCKERS!
wow
I'm not sure how you intended that, but I wasn't implying that you -should- have been psychoanalyzing? I might just be having trouble with your textual tone.
To underline something that might get lost in this exchange of, uh... 'constructive criticism'... I believe archimago's point about hack critics being worse than hack writers is very true. It's really easy to throw stones, but it's not so easy to have been right there in the situation and still have had the presence of mind to write it down. In whatever form seemed best.
Of course, I don't think that last super-comment/counteroffensive is going to allow this thread to cool down, but hey. Hipster/intelligentsia battle royale = fun for everyone.
@archimago
Well, nobody can contest how obviously learn-ed that you are. Since you keep name dropping Nabokov, it is probably worth mentioning a term that he used to describe the petty-bourgeois... it was poshlost - it means smug vulgarity, perhaps you should look into it?
Machinations - I wasn't beginning with you, trying to rebut or anything like that... I just mean that I hadn't considered the possibility of humour as a coping mechanism - that seems to be right on the money, which is fine, better humour than the bottle, or utter grief, or something like that (although there is, I reckon, a fine line between the tendency to wagg and insanity). Humour after all is synonymical with medicine. I'm assuming here that you agree (I just mean that I'm not trying to be combative, when I make the assumption).
wilshire - Perhaps. "Nobody can contest how obviously learn-ed that you are." Sarcasm, clearly. Regardless - between wisdom and learnedness, falls the shadow. I bet you are smarterer. But I'm just kind of writing like this for kicks, its not like any of us would have become corporeal-real world buds if I was only nice, humble. What I wrote up there could have been a lovely reconciliation I suppose had I not added that veni, vidi, vici crap - I'm on the side of Cicero, but added that for kicks. I would have just written a straight-up brass tacks recounting, but I thought it was a bigger, more hysterical story than it was - as puzzling as that may seem considering why I chose such prose. Just so you know, most mentions of Nabokov were simply due attribution, with the exception being the last, anent antiboy - that was an appeal to authority, but we aren't seriously going to debate the greatness of the Unutterable Name I hope (I know you will, Scout, but I'm addressing wilshire).
So to sum - I wrote a bum fragment with pious intent, and adapted a persona decorous to what I was meeting.
Still no apologies to the critics, particularly the former set...
So I'm apparently part of the group archimago was trying to preempt, and yet I liked the first hand account. His most recent comment... oy vey. You're far, far too PC when you stat dropping "otherist" into your conversation.
The funniest response to this has been the demand for more gun control. Because people driving at high speeds (illegal) in visibly registered vehicles and then exchanging gunfire between aforesaid vehicles will be preempted from their violence if only there were more restrictions on guns. Notwithstanding the essential prohibitions on handguns or the exceptionally long list of crimes racked up in a running gunfight. Assault, attempted murder, criminal negligence, vandalism, reckless driving, speeding, street racing (possibly), illegal possession of a firearm... One more 2 year charge will clear this right up.
Suuuure.
What we really need is the Carlos Mencia gun control program. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09tAk1chANk
poshlust is a great concept, def. will read that essay.
The shooters clearly missed the mark.
Not only does he namedrop Nabokov like there's no tomorrow, he does with Kafka, Whitman, and Tolstoy too! Who's the cute little noodlehead now? Whose undergrad lit syllabus did you find in the recycling bin and recite just now? Wanna recite The Kraken to us over some lattés?
I think by the sheer blabbering intensity of your "rebuttals", you've shown who the real thin-skinned hack is here. Letting some blog commenters get under your skin is probably even lamer than blasting someone's shitty, try-hard, overly-constructed prose.
I'm coming to finish you off, Riley.
Under my skin, ha! Like i said, you can't rip on scenester fuckwads and then let it get to you when some of them get upset. I've clearly upset you though, you fucking ninny! You've lost all logic; though I'm not sure you ever had any. How else could you have at me for so-called namedropping and then turn around and do the same thing with a much more obscure literary reference than a few famous authors? I haven't really studied any Tennyson - did your english teacher cover that poem? Why not at least pick a piece which could be used allegorically in some way to help make your point, if you're gonna start 'namedropping'? I referenced The Odyssey in my little story, why not mention that? Something concerning an excess of pride man! (with the suffixion of -boy to your nick' I'm going to assume your gender here... well, I already did a few posts back) Or Frankenstein - a tale about a brilliant scientist who creates a horrendous monster (my piece?) to dire consequence. That one - excuse me - is a no-brainer! Fuck, the alternate title is The Modern Prometheus! But literature is filled with stories dealing with just the kind of situation which you are perceiving, hubris. Tennyson, a poet known for his fierce hatred of critics, is the best you can do? Please try harder you fucking oaf, I'll help you, and you have the internet at your disposal! Also, I never said anyone was 'thin-skinned' (I would have used sensitive probably, 'thin-skinned' I find unappealing aesthetically - although, I do like the rhyme) although I did call you a hack critic, which you are helping to substantiate. Step it up - and cut the unqualified hyperbole - or shut up. And don't confuse that I won't let you get away with inadequate tripe with - wait for it - sensitivity.
bring it on, friendo.
Boy, usually trolls are at least somewhat funny or entertaining.
You're just plain boring.
Finis, my little June-cuckoo, finis.
what a sensitive fellow
The useless prose is most likely just covering up how shit scared he was.
I'm *sure* it was the full media card that prevented you from snapping some photos, and not you just pissing your pants.
Yeah you're right, I should have taken my camera out of the backpack, deleted some photos lickety-split, removed the lens cap, focused, and snapped some shots, presto. Because anything lesser makes me a shit scared pants pisser - regardless of what I said for effect in a narrative. you are one hep cat.
All words spoken behind the veil of anonymity are the words of a coward.
That's a very good point, "UnionStayshyn."
I bet the authentic boho is really a pseudo like everyone else on here.