Toronto Life watch

I see Toronto Life is still running that stupid poll feature on the back page. Every month I hope it will have been changed to something more interesting, like 'Casserole of the Month' or 'Celebrity Lint', but no. They ask random vox pops a bunch of neither-serious-nor-actually-funny questions and print the meaningless results. I can see the advantages from the editor's point of view: it's free, and the intern can do it in an hour. But you'd think there'd be a voice in the back of his head pointing out that it's totally unamusing, month after month.

The only reason I notice is that the back page used to be the best thing in the magazine. It was a kind of obituary page, only for local institutions as well as heroes and villains -- I remember one for the old CHUM AM. It was often very poignant and well written, with a genuine local feeling. And before that it was a pretty good humour column by Marni Jackson. (Yes, Dr. B. goes way back.) It's the perfect spot for a snappy interview, or to a spotlight a local hero. But I guess advertisers don't care what goes there. And so the editors don't either.