If you had unlimited power – magical power as a wizard, or even unlimited built-in power like Superman – what would you do with it? Would you act responsibly and protect us regular folks? Or would you become greedy and try to take over the world, like a […]
When I visited him in 2003, he was living in a posh, modern mid-rise, its lobby ablaze in polished surfaces that gleamed like gold teeth. A waxed baby grand languished near the concierge’s desk. His apartment on the 10th floor seemed an affront to the cool gloss below: […]
In February ’04, when Jim Munroe and I were interviewed for an eye story on this website, Toronto cartoonist Marc Ngui caricatured us for the cover. He made Jim a spot-on reproduction of a video-game skin. Me, he drew in a nimble cross-hatching, a Crumb-style likeness so effective […]
If you’ve seen the movie Sideways, you may remember Paul Giamatti’s character discussing his imminent book deal with a certain small-press publisher named Conundrum. “Conundrum?!” I thought between fistfuls of popcorn. “No, it can’t be.” How did Andy Brown — the mensch behind Montreal indie publisher Conundrum Press […]
In a brief flashback to the hip Queen Street West I remember from the ’80s, I chanced upon a cult-hit videogame there. I was killing time and wandered into Microplay and asked the counter guy if any interesting games had come down the pike lately. “Yeah,” he said, […]
“A good salesperson has to be a psychologist,” Mel Rapp says, sitting at the back of his College Street optical shop, legs crossed alertly, riding a tangent in his distant, foggy voice. “I use all my experiences to try to inform the attitudes and feelings — the psychology […]