Ron Howard's Call To Action

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

The funniest thing I've seen all week, and reminding me how funny Ron was as the narrator on "Arrested Development"

Nuit Blanche 2008 Heart of a Saturday Night

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2008

Heart of a Saturday Night

(all photos by the2scoops/Jason Carlin - see something you like, drop a line)

6:45pm - Finished an 8 hour shift at work that dragged into 10 hours, leave the office and immediately hit Shopper's Drug Mart for supplies: Red Bull, trail mix, water, spare batteries for the camera. I'm determined to go as late as I can.

6:46pm - Curses! Left the flask of good rum at home. Now I have to rely on my scarf and gloves to keep me warm.

7:45pm - My companion for the night is The Doctor, who meets me for dinner. I applaud my common sense as I fully predict downing several Red Bulls, so makes sense to bring my own physician.

7:53pm - The Doc downs a drink. Looks like I'm looking after my own well being...

9:05pm - Finish dinner and hit the streets. Already the intersection at Queen and University is packed with people going everywhere. We follow the strategy to stick to the bigger public pieces until the crowds die down around midnight. The downtown core exhibits will be jammed.

9:17pm - Make it to the Stereoscope exhibition at Metro City Hall. The installation is by the German group Project Blinkenlights, who've placed lamps behind every window in the twin buildings of City Hall, wired into it, and turned the iconic building into a pixelated computer screen. The public gets to use controllers and cell phones to manipulate the screen. It's the type of large scale exhibit that I hope to see more of around Nuit Blanche - huge in ambition and the public can participate.

9:26pm - Oh look, they're using this miraculous contraption to play Pong.

9:46pm - Walk up University to see "Waterfall" by Katherine Harvey. Recyclable plastic waterbottles are woven into a net quilt to form a suspended waterfall.

While crowds pack the front of the exhibit, we check out the view from behind the falls.

10:00pm - We make our way across University of Toronto. Disappointed there isn't any big projects making use of all that space at the centre of campus. We make our way up to the Gardiner Ceramics Museum to browse a bit.

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11:30 pm Hollander York Gallery in Yorkville is hosting Painting to The Beat with live music and artists at work.

Tucked at the back of the Hollander Gallery, we found this painting by Toronto's Bev Rodin. It's part of a Forest Light series, and she captures it beautifully. We take a few minutes and just take it in.

11:45pm - Circus of Dreams at the Metro Reference Library.

12:20am - Everyone seemed to get a shot of Into The Blue at the Eaton Centre.

1:20am - The Doc calls it a night, so I set out for Liberty Village at King St. and Dufferin Ave. I'm looking forward to exploring the neighborhood, a new area to Nuit Blanche. The area's exhibit is Beginning to See The Light, the title from a 1969 Velvet Underground song.

In addition to the clear connotation of daybreak, the phrase implies anticipation, hope, expectation, enlightenment and a gradual epiphany. The works in the show embody these ideas, employing a variety of strategies such as play, protest, agitation and resistance.

1:25am Imagine Peace by Yoko Ono.
Make a wish, tie it to a branch. So many wishes shining like cherry blossoms in the night.



1:39am I Promise It Will Always Be This Way, 2008
Jon Sasaki - Toronto, Canada

In a stadium, rock music plays and mascots entertain a crowd for a game that never comes. Fun and oddly energizing.

2:00am - I follow a crowd and stumble onto the 2am show for SMASH! Droppin' Stuff by The Custodians of Destruction. We're going to see trash getting trashed. Computer monitors, a Nintendo, office furniture, a microwave, a TV. You know the saying that goes "I don't know art, but I know what I like"? Well I liked this.

2:20am - Warm up with a coffee at Balzac's, or as Amy says phonetically, "Ball Sack".

2:36am Purified by Fire - Video loops of fire are rear projected onto the windows. Hypnotic and a sense that something is amiss, that we're seeing fire but no destruction, no sound, no smoke.

2:45am Overflow by Michel de Broin. In a former prison chapel in Liberty Village Park, Michel de Broin summons a waterfall to flow from a 3rd story window, with all the appropriate detritus and debris. Would have been stunning up close...

...but this was as close as we could get. Someone didn't get the memo on this being a public art event as the park was entirely fenced off and no one was allowed near the exhibit. Stupid stupid stupid decisions that make me angry. Left a bad taste in my mouth.

4:25 am - I've been at St James Cathedral at King and Church Street for about an hour now. I had really hoped to catch some of the performance aspects of Don Coyote & Quixotic, but I've hit the wall, nothing left in the tank. I've been sitting here, listening to organ music blasting and watching video installations. I'd hoped to make it to the next stage of the live performance around 5am, but I'm bagged. I get the subway and a cab, and get to bed by 5:30am

Should have managed one more Red Bull, because here's what I missed as around 5am, Quixotic built up to "a phantasmagoric roaming ritual" as "'La momma morta', (The Dead Mother), reveals herself in protest as a spectral divine" (video from Dear Toronto):

Count me in for next year - I just have to make sure I clear my day ahead of the night. We staggered out that night, in search of a city brought to life from dusk til dawn and teeming with art. We found that people really like things getting smashed, wishing, and finding beauty in the strangest places.