Distractions Come And Go, but Lolcats are Forever.

SIX HARD fought pages. Not bad for a Saturday with some, but not a lot, of sleep. Sadly, though, this is a bad time to be fighting to get a first draft done if you live in Toronto.

That's because there's this new arts festival that's just started called Luminato.

It's a major event in the Toronto arts firmament because this city has badly neglected both the arts and the resultant effect on tourism for several years now. (All you boneheads out there, save the comments below: spending on the arts has been proven to be an extraordinarily effective economic lever in just about every study of the last ten years. Grumble somewhere else. Eejit.)

Compared to a city like San Francisco, Toronto's Arts Commitment has been extraordinarily sporadic. Then we got hit with SARS a few years ago, and the bottom dropped out of the tourism industry. The Lord of the Rings musical was supposed to save it, but didn't, cause it was bad. So lately they've been scrambling. They finally gave some money so that Toronto got a proper Opera House and they've added a swanky new crystal by that hoity-toity architect to the Royal Ontario Museum... but the latest and greatest volley is this brand new arts fest that lights up Toronto for ten days in June.

And when I say "lights up" I'm not kidding. Among some of the events is a light show above the waterfront condos that is user-controlled. There's floating art installations in places like the train station;
there's also a new piece by Leonard Cohen with music by Philip Glass; Not the Messiah, a not-so-reverent piece conceived by Python Eric Idle, and any one of a number of other artistic fooferaws happening around the smog-choked city.

Last night, thanks to my sister, who's been working her patootie off for his festival for the last six months, I went to the opening party.

And there were friends of mine there relaxing, and we chatted with my parents, and they raved about Eric Idle, and it was all very nice, and a perfect gateway to a weekend of enjoying the arts.

Except...

This is the writer version of the kid with the broken leg watching through the window while everyone plays in the snow.

What can you do? Pages is pages. Enjoying the writing, though it tortures. Spoke to a bunch of students from top colleges and film programs around Toronto yesterday. You never know at the time if it's going to pay off for one of those people, but you just hope it does.

I've been thinking about karma lately, and how to make mine better. I'm sailing along pretty good right now, all tickety-boo, and so my "yeah, okay" filter - that's been closed on account of busyness lately, has turned into a right spigot. And hey, I even got called a "thinking blogger," which is nice, I think, once I take the time to figure out what it all means. I'm not buying a timeshare in Jacksonville, I'm telling you that right now.

See what happens when you're in a city where weird art things are going on all around you and the sun is out? You get all soft and suggestible.

And sure, six pages wasn't great, but it was six! pages!...I'm closer and closer...and provided that tomorrow goes well, I'll be in good shape on my script.

So if you're a Torontonian this week, I hope you're enjoying Luminato. What do y'all think of the crystal?

But if you're like me, and you're shackled to your deadline, all I can say is, Russel Smith aside, the whole explosion of regular media interest in the whole blood/brain/cat/net barrier this week has been something to behold. Still..this is the best LOLCat joke ever. Alex put it on Facebook but he didn't blog it. So it's mine. Sucker.

Come on. That's some awesome right there, my son!

Hey one more thing. Does this mean we can all stop talking about awesome Ronald Reagan was?