The Deep Friar

My Favorite Moments During “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”

Posted December 19, 2015 by Friar
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: cartoons, Christmas, Grinch Who Stole Chirstmas

In the beginning of the cartoon, the Grinch talks about stopping Christmas from coming. His lips move, but his teeth remain in the same space. That always fascinated me, ever since I was a kid.

The expression of pure joy as Max thinks he’s going for a sleigh ride…

…and the Grinch’s immediate reaction. (“Yeah…right!” ). Especially when the pom-pom of his hat drops. That’s classic Chuck Jones animation.

The Grinch slithering among the gifts like the snake that he is….

The fire truck with the super-strong ladder, which can boost the Grinch to the top of the tree. I always wished I could have a toy like that. .

“Cindy Lou Who, who is no more than two” Compare her to the size of the Christmas decoration, she must be about 8 inches tall. Also notice that she and the other who children have antennae. Does that mean they’re part insect?

“And the one speck of food he left in the house, was a crumb that was even too small or even a mouse”. And then he STEALS it…!!! The poor mouse’s sad expression is priceless.

The scene where he steals the ice-cubes. Think of this: it’s 20 below outside…the town is covered in ice and snow. The Whos could always go out and get ice any time they wanted. But the Grinch still takes the trouble to take the ice cubes from their fridge and put them in his bag, where the will be useless and melt. Just to prove a point…because that’s the kind of a-hole he is. 🙂

The scene towards the end of the movie, when the Whos were still happy, even though the Grinch had stolen their gifts. And the Grinch puzzled and puzzled, till his puzzler was sore, and then he had his epiphany. You can tell when it happens, when the background color changes.

“And then ,the true meaning of Christmas came through, and the Grinch found the strength of ten Grinches, plus TWO”

I always loved that “plus TWO”. It just ads further emphasis to his complete transformation.

And I don’t know what kind of critter a “Roast Beast” is. It apparently has at least two legs, but the inside looks like pure solid meat with no organs or bones or gristle. That’s MY kind of meal.

And you can keep slicing it and slicing it, and it never gets smaller and you never run out of food.

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Nuns Frighten Me

Posted November 15, 2015 by Friar
Categories: Uncategorized

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Junior Bears’ Big Weekend Road Trip

Posted April 26, 2015 by Friar
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Blind River, Cochrane, Giant Bison, Giant Snowman, Hearst, Highway 11, Highway 17, Lake Superior, Marathon Ontario, northern ontario, Thunder Bay

1. Blind River

Frozen Lake Huron.

They have this stupid windmill located on the lake shore. Of all the times we’ve been here, not once, have we ever seen it working. Ever.

2. Katherine Cove

Frozen Lake Superior. Junior sees two Great Lakes in one day.

A Mom with her kids was on the beach. Her five year old son wanted a photo of his toy with Junior. It was some kind of dragon that spat our a plastic flame, from a McDonalds Happy Meal.

I asked the kid what the toys’ name was. He said it didn’t have one.

I suggested “Clem”, but the kid shook his head “No”.

Then I suggested THUN-DAR and he agreed.

So here is Junior with THUN-DAR.

3. Old Woman Bay

This is last view of the lake you get from the highway, until you get to Marathon, another 200 km further down the road.

4. Pebble Beach, Marathon

Of course there’s a sign telling you not take any rocks with you.

5. Rossport

There is absolutely nothing here except some houses Not even so much as a convenience store.

6 Thunder Bay

This was the furthest west we could reasonably go for the weekend, and still get back to work on time for Monday

It was the first town with traffic lights since we left Sault St. Marie.

7. Terry Fox Memorial, Thunder Bay

He ran the equivalent of a Marathon every day, from St. Johns Newfoundland to here.

8 Beardmore

This is the only thing the town had going for it: a giant snowman.

Junior was pleased that he was sitting in the “BEAR” letters”.

9. Geraldton

Sunday morning, at 11:00 AM.

This was one of the “bigger” towns in the area. So we tried to find a single restaurant that was open. With no success.

Where do people here go to eat? There wasn’t even a truck stop.

10. Hearst

Big Critters. Junior made some friends.

Since Thunder Bay, this was the longest stretch of paved road (500 km) we have ever seen without a single McDonalds or Tim Hortons.

There was also the biggest log pile we have ever seen.

11. Moonbeam

Everything is always better, when you got UFO’s.

12. Giant Polar Bear

In downtown Cochrane.

Please note: DO NOT CLIMB.

13. 49th Parallel

This is just about the saddest road-side attraction I have ever seen.

14 Giant Bison

His name is apparently “Earl”. Maybe being next to Earlton has something to do with it.

All in all, we drove more ~ 2700 km.

If this had been the UK, we’d have driven a big chunk of the entire country.

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Monday Night Art Class: No Improvement.

Posted December 9, 2014 by Friar
Categories: Friar's Artwork
Tags: original artwork., watercplor, yukon cabin

Here are two versions of the same painting.

I did this first one back in 2001. I overdid the foreground…it was getting too dark and the watercolors were on the verge of becoming mud. I wasn’t happy with it and one day I figured I’d do it again.

Fast forward 13 years. I finished the painting below this week. And once again, I overdid the foreground, and the watercolors were on the verge of becoming mud. .

It’s okay…adequate.

But I don’t feel the love. Over a decade of painting later, I’m still not not happy with it.

But this time I’m not doing it again.

I”m DONE with this one.

Some paintings are just…meh…..not meant to be. .

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Monday Night Art Class: The Day of the Squirrel

Posted October 29, 2014 by Friar
Categories: Friar Toons
Tags: bad art, humor, original art, watercolor painting

Oh well.

They can’t all be gems.

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Connecting the Dots in Northern Ontario

Posted October 28, 2014 by Friar
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Arctic Watershed Restaurant, Gowganda, Northern Ontario. Hornepayne, Shining Tree, white river

It’s fair to say that I’ve driven on most of the paved roads in Northeastern Ontario, all the way from North Bay to Thunder Bay. But there are still a few spots I haven’t explored.

I’ve always wanted to see the area north of White River, especially Hornepayne, a town located northeast of Lake Superior.

Don’t ask me why, but it’s always bugged me that I’ve never been there.

This past summer, I happened to be in the neighborhood (meaning being within 100 km) so of course I had to check it out.

Junior Bear already liked the place, as the town logo had BEARS on it. .

Hornepayne’s population is about 1000. It’s basically a railway town out in the bush.

You know you’re in Northern Ontario, when you have to worry about finding the next gas station within 60 miles.

I’ve never seen gas stations this far apart in the Lower 48, except maybe the Utah desert or Death Valley.

Of course, there are the mandatory closed-down buildings and failed businesses. The economy of Northern Ontario has seen better days, and Hornepayne is no exception.

Some of the residential areas were nicer…

…where I came across this park with brightly colored playground benches. I guess this was the towns’ attempt to cheer up the place.

Though, as one of my Facebook friends pointed out: “This is the most pathetic park I have ever seen”.

I kinda felt sorry for it.

A sign invited people to sit in the big chair, for a “Kodak Moment”.

I doubt any of todays’ kids would even have a clue what that means, but Junior was happy to oblige.

The other stretch of road I saw for the first time was Highway 560 the between the Watershed Car and Truck Stop and Temiskaming Shores, north of Sudbury.

The Watershed Truck Stop is not much to look at. It’s just a modest coffee shop/restaurant with a dirt parking lot and some gas pumps.

But it’s actually quite a significant landmark. It’s the only place to get gas and coffee in the lonely 300 km between Subbury and Timmins. It’s always busy.

It’s called the “Watershed” because it’s located at the approximate boundary of the arctic watershed (i.e. the point north of which all the lakes and rivers all drain into Hudsons’ Bay instead of the Great Lakes).

Heading East on Highway 560, I found a lot of ugly clear-cuts.

Of course, there is logging everywhere in Ontario. But further south, at least it’s somewhat hidden. There’s usually a buffer of forest between the logging operations and the highway or lakes, in order to preserve the semblance of untouched wilnderness. .

But once you get up past Sudbury, they don’t’ even bother. It’s like logging companies stopped pretending to care.

“Here are the clear-cuts, folks. DEAL WITH IT ! ”

aNext was the town of Shining Tree. I don’t even know what the population is. It’s so small Wikipedia only has two sentences about it.

The village is basically a fishing lodge surrounded by a few buildings.

Though it has a school that appears to be in use and surprisingly quite well-maintained for such a small local population.

I wonder who goes to high school here? How big would the graduating class be? Two?

Next was the slightly larger town of Gowganda.

It has a major motel and some fishing lodges. And lots of cottages around a lake.

By this point, things were starting to feel more crowded.

There were more cottages and more motels. I was south the Arctic watershed and back in the Great Lakes drainage basin. And the gas stations were more frequent.

I only had 43 km to get to Elk Lake, where the forest petered out and farmland started again.

Even though I was still “way up north” compared to Toronto standards, that “northern feeling” of wilderness and remoteness was gone.

I was returning to civilization, and it was time to go home.

(Which was still 6 hours away).

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A Quick Eclipse

Posted October 23, 2014 by Friar
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Ontario Eclipse, photography, Solar Eclipse October 2014

Today in Ontario we had a partial solar eclipse. In fact, it covered most of North America.

Nothing spectacular where I was Just a tiny wedge of the sun disappeared.

And of course it just happened at sunset so I literally only had maybe 15-20 minutes to see the whole thing before it disappeared.

But I wanted to catch the event on camera. But I don’t have welders glasses, or a tripod, or fancy camera filters.

So I just used some binoculars and safely projected the image of the sun on a piece of paper taped to my car window.

This is the low budget approach.

And it takes a LOT of patience to hold the camera with one hand, the binocs with the other, and line everything up. The image of the sun from the two eyepieces jiggles all over the place. (Like I said, I dont’ have a tripod).

But if you take a few dozen pictures, a few will turn out okay.

Here you can see the progression of the eclipse. The black dot in the middle is a large sunspot named “Active Region 2192“.

The lines on the top of these last two photos aren’t smudges or mistakes. Those are the branches of the trees, as the sun was just dipping below the horizon.

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Margy Boogy

Posted October 16, 2014 by Friar
Categories: Friar's Grab Bag
Tags: 1970's, Catholic School, Ecole Marguerite Bourgeois, Elementary School, Montreal

This is the school I went to in Montreal from Grade 3 to Grade 6. It was totally in French. It was called “École Marguerite Bourgeois” but we all called it “Margy-Boogy”for short.

My teacher in Grade 3 was a miserable nun…this is where I learned my Catholic Guilt (but that’s a whole other story).

Half of Margy Boogy’s population were Special Ed kids, who stayed in one side of the school. Us regular students occupied the other side.

The Special Ed kids were referred to as “Mentals” and you definitely didn’t want to be caught alone on the wrong side. There was a definite border: the “Mental Side” began once you crossed threshold and entered into the older wing of the school.

And the Mentals were terrifying. They roamed around the schoolyard in groups. At recess or at lunch, you had to make sure you stayed away from their territory, or you might get beat up.

Sometimes they would zero in on a kid and pick on him at random. You never know when it might be you, or your friends. You might just get shoved around and bullied, or you might get a black eye. This was a constant threat you learned to live with.

The teachers had no control. I remember seeing a small kid lying on the ground screaming in terror while two bigger Mentals beat him up, right in front of two teachers. I don’t’ know what was worse…watching the kid get beat up, or the fact that the teachers just stood there watching and did nothing.

Another time, I saw one of these kids (maybe 10 years old) ask a teacher for some cigarettes, who gave them to him. I couldn’t believe it…I thought adults were supposed to be responsible. It’s like these teachers had given up and couldn’t be bothered any more.

Even in our part side of the school, the teachers had no control. Our English teacher was having a hard time handling one of the bigger kids (who was borderline Special Ed himself). He was disrupting the class for the nth time and she lost it. I remember her grabbing him by the arm, red-faced and screaming, with tears screaming down her face. And the kid just stood there laughing in her face.

Soon after that, she was replaced and never came back.

Some of the male teachers had a better handle on things, if you want to call it that. They came up with creative ways to torture the kids without actually having to touch them.

Like making a bad kid face a wall, stand a few feet away form it, and lean into it, with their forehead smooshed up against it. The kid had to stand there with his hands behind his back, so that his forehead took all his body’s weight and he squirmed and moaned until he could take no more. Meanwhile the teacher just sat at his desk like a prick and kept scolding the kid, while the rest of us had to watch.

The same type of crap happened on the bus: our bus driver used to lose his temper all the time. To be fair, though, I could hardly blame him because some of these kids were BAD.

Like one little shit, who was so disruptive that one day, the bus driver pulled over and stopped so that he could literally kick the kid off the bus. Of course, the kid thought this was a game and he ran up and down the aisle, jumping over seats, dodging the red-face bus-driver who couldn’t catch him. Poor man, I though he was gong to blow a gasket.

Which he actually did, one day. After months of dealing with such demon-spawn, one day the bus driver stopped the bus and lay back in his seat, all pale-looking and tired. We were stuck there for an hour until one of the older kids Grade 6 kids found an adult to got help.

It turns out the bus driver was having a heart attack, right then and there, in the bus. Eventually somebody else came by and drove us home.

As for our bus driver, he was replaced, and never came back.

I was 8 at the time. This is what I learned school was like.

People often say they have fond memories of their school days, but to be honest, I don’t.

In fact, to this day, I still have anxiety dreams about Margy-Boogy, even though this all happened 40 years ago.

Even seeing this Google Map photo gives me the creeps.

(*Shudder*)

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