The Danzig Street Shootout - minute by minute on Twitter

I was made aware of the Danzig Street shooting by a YAHOO News headline, as I accessed my email. Toronto news is of no particular interest to a Vancouverite so the shooting didn't really catch my attention until I gave the CTV News Channel ten minutes of my time, over the lunch hour Tuesday.  The TV reporting was of the typical "I'm standing on the sidewalk where it all happened," variety.  Ten minutes Googling the story gave me a far clearer picture, and resulted in my posting last night's Blog article.  Scroll down for more on "The City, By Homicide" and NATIONAL POST graphic artists.

When I Googled the names of the four people listed as creators the NATIONAL POST  graphic, this is what I found.

Ian Vandaelle describes himself as "Morally, socially & financially bankrupt."  Does that make him dangerous? or just cute?

Samina Esha is a "shopaholic and bookie".   It's starting to look like the POST team has "street cred".

Jonathon Rivait is the punster in the pack. "My rock is cock hard."

Richard Johnson is all about "Sarcasm, cynicism, skepticism - in monster proportions."

What an interesting posse of crime reporters!  To be accurate, it is Jonathan Rivait and Richard Johnson who must take the lion's share of credit for the wonderful graphics the NATIONAL POST publishes on a fairly regular basis. Others contribute only research.

TWITTER REPORTING - the Danzig Street Shootout

The really significant thing about this shooting in Toronto is not the bombast and baloney spouted by the Mayor and Chief of Police. Rather it was the level of involvement by citizens participating in the mass crime, or reporting on it via their Twitter Accounts. An article written by Joshua Errett, editor at NOW Magazine in Toronto, is a good place to start.

Joshua's article is HERE.

Even now, two days after the shooting, you can get a far better sense of what went done on Danzig Street, by reading Twitter archives, than you can by reading commercial news accounts.  There is a lesson in this.  Should you ever be caught up in a big event... a natural disaster, a major crime, etc... task someone with downloading the Twitter chatter before it gets edited or truncated by deletions. It will later be a valuable resource for reconstructing chain of events.

DANZIG STREET TWEETS - The shooters "touched the wrong people".  .."there is gonna be a war".   On that point at least, the Street and the Mayor's Office agree.

Luka Magnotta - Human Flesh is on EVERYONE'S Menu

We are truly living in the  "Age of Moral Relativism," don't you agree?  We adopt or adapt our  personal standards to fit the moment, and any community value that intrudes on our pleasure, we resent and resist.  No two people seem to share the same set of values unless they live in a village where the wearing of veils or of a halo is mandatory. Here in Canada the right to walk around confused is protected by law.  This is why I do insist that the Luka Magnotta case is the story for our times.  Luka is us, and we are Luka.

Chapter next...

Last week an overheated story connected American porn star Ron Jeremy to the Luka Magnotta case.   It was hustled first by the commercial news media and then played with by Bloggers. The NATIONAL POST had the best coverage of the story by any Canadian paper.  "Ron Jeremy courted to Play Magnotta bait in 2011 sting"  The Post article is HERE.  The story got quite a chewing but it had no real taste. Still I did  enjoy the Post's teaser headline, which had Ron Jeremy "courted" and not "pitched" as they say in the movie/tv business. Who said "There is no romance in porn films."?

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Ms. Luka Magnotta - She's out there somewhere.

The essentials of the Magnotta-Jeremy story are as follows.  Luka Magnotta is a wannabe porn star, and loves the lens.  Prior to committing murder in Montreal he had also posted videos of himself torturing and "murdering" kittens, and by doing so he pissed off a very dangerous crowd... Animal Protection Activists. In fact one such group in the U.S. had decided to pull a vigilante stunt and capture Luka, while recording the whole caper for reality television.  The vigilantes needed to bait their hook with something appetizing enough for Magnotta to consider crossing into the United States, where he would be vulnerable to a take-down. An attempt was made to seduce Ron Jeremy,  the King of Porndom, into co-starring in the production, but in the end he backed out.  Once Magnotta became the story of the moment, the vigilantes decided to get some press flogging a thin tale about how their Animal Rights efforts might have prevented a human murder.  

The Master Chef of Ass Meat, Mr. Ron Jeremy recently appeared on "The Peta Files".  Did you know that PETA uses pornography as a fund raising tool?  The essential logic to the ploy is that the older Christian crowd doesn't  give a shit about animal rights, but the younger generation is passionate about doing good... especially if you make it fun.  In fact the Press Releases for Jeremy's spot endorsing People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was flying around at about the same time as news broke about the heinous butchering of Justin Lin in Montreal. Like every other video celebrity, Ron Jeremy must do charity work to build profile, maintain professional contacts and to help keep the jackals at the I.R.S. at bay.  The putative posse of animal rescuers in the story was said to be the big bad boys of RESCUE INK, a 'reality television' program I had never heard of.  Now that I have done my research, I never want to hear of them again.

The gimmick in RESCUE INK...  every "reality" show has a gimmick... is a group of tough guys with a past, all of them heavily tattooed (inked) and all born with a soft heart for little animals.  One is an ex detective, but the rest are... (well, read the details in an investigative story written by Long Island, N.Y. reporter Mark Harrington in 2009  MANY IN RESCUE INK HAVE A CHECKERED PAST.)

The story which we Canadians were exposed to last week was skimpy and didn't add up.  Yes, RESCUE INK were the heavily tattooed vigilantes who approached Ron Jeremy through intermediaries, including a couple of ridiculous bimbos, but what you need to know is that Jeremy has "people".  You have to pay for his appearances.  RESCUE INK sold just six episodes to the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC channel in 2009 but the cable-caster has gotten cold feet, and the show isn't in production  any more. (A website sniff detects stink.  The  dog lovers at RESCUE INK share fantasies of Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino or Dylvester Stalone playing their lives in a movie!) These bad boys were looking for a comeback and couldn't write Jeremy a check. Don't judge Jeremy by how he made his living. He's no Jethro Bodine.  In fact before he got into the lucrative world of ass meat he was a teacher. (According to an old interview has "a Master's degree in Special Education and two B.A.s in Theatre and Education".) The gossip we read last week in the NATIONAL POST was nonsense, but the whole Magnotta story is so grotesque and ridiculous that factoids are piling up like popping corn.

One of the few "reality" shows which we do watch and enjoy is Anthony Bourdain's  NO RESERVATIONS.  Hell, my kids even read his books.  Bourdain is shown in this photo quaffing some Ron de Jeremy  rum. (No kidding, the sausage man also has his own rum label!) Bourdain is a man of genuine wit who tries hard to deliver lines we haven't heard 10,000 times before, and he discussed the naughty side of cuisine when he hosted Ron Jeremy in an episode of his show.

The point is that there will be no Main Event.  The Magnotta trial next year is irrelevant. Everybody and his dog is trying to peel themselves a layer off the Magnotta onion  before the trial, and clever little bastards are out there now, hatching schemes to surpass Magnotta's super low budget production.  Magnotta is everything that defines the modern era... pornography, violence, celebrity, Facebook, gadgets, etc.  The craze to do something, ANYTHING, to get attention.  And we're watching.