my baby don't tolerate

A lot of people told me that having worked the nightshift for over two years, I'd be ready for the sleepless nights. That's like saying working 9-to-5 prepares you for not sleeping during the day.

Winnipeg's Paper Moon have a new EP out in advance of a forthcoming long-player due in the new year. The album will be Only During Thunderstorms, the EP is What Are You Going To Do With Me? and it's available, like, now at the Endearing online store. EP includes this rad cover of everyone's favourite Hot Little Rocket song.

mp3: "Down With Safe" by Paper Moon

The new lady in my life

Lillian Simone Matheson, born 6:07 a.m., Sunday, Dec.7/08 at BC Womens' Hospital in Vancouver. Birthweight: 7 lbs, 14 oz

Everyone's healthy, no one's sleeping enough.

mp3: "Sweet Child of Mine" by Luna

Yeah but we're gonna chicken out, cuz we don't like to fight...

I can't believe I got up at 6 a.m. (PST) for this. When Harper walked out of Rideau Hall with his prorogation, I let out a pre-emptive yawn the size of Meech Lake.
Short term, well, good for Harper. Long term, what's the strategy? He's burnt his bridges with the Liberals and NDP, and he's done even worse with the Bloc, which otherwise would be his only chance of getting a budget passed.

The highlight of the morning, though, was Don Newman talking to John Baird, Minister of Transport in the House of Commons. Baird laid out a bunch of the typical "separatist coalition" party line, and Newman called him on it every time, saying Baird either hadn't read or hadn't understood the coalition accord. Baird continued saying blatantly unfactual things, and Newman called him on it every time. Even the Newsworld anchors seemed unsettled at how many bald-face untruths came out of Baird's mouth. It was nice to see the media holding politicians accountable for what they say. Feels like it's been a while.

mp3: "Rats' Revenge, Part 2" by the Rats

Pot, meet Kettle...

Stockwell Day, ladies and gentlemen, the gift that keeps on giving.

Meanwhile, Harper booster Stephen Taylor says, "not a single person voted for a coalition government." Is it just me, or did half the country just forget what a Parliamentary system entails? This is what it's all about folks. Stephen Harper was elected with a minority mandate, which means the will of the Canadian electorate was that the Conservative Party work with the Opposition parties to run the nation. When Harper, Flaherty and Flanagan tried to put their collective loafer to the Liberal Party's financial throat under the flimsy flag of dealing with the economic downturn, they showed nothing but contempt for that expressed will of the people. They had a chance to govern, and they blew it. Big time.

A coalition government, right now, is the best possible outcome for Canadians. The current members of Parliament have been elected and it's time to let them do their jobs. Whether or not the Liberals and NDP will be able to keep it together long enough to actually pass a bill is another question, but the Conservatives have abused their opportunity to govern and deserve to lose it.

In happier news, here's a vid of Brian Borcherdt covering Kim Mitchell. And here's a track from Borcherdt's swell new EP, Coyotes.

mp3: "While I Was Asleep" by Brian Borcherdt

Is this what you're looking for?

Bulldozer rampage.

Holy F#%k! Kim Mitchell?

Stephen Harper on the role of the opposition in a minority government. (via Paul Wells @ Macleans) Oh, you see what he's doing there, he means a Conservative opposition. That's why what he said then doesn't line up with what he's doing now.

Martha Wainwright: very good. Great voice, great energy, great band. Biggest surprise of the show: Opener Brian Borcherdt (whose myspace profile pic does him no favours--unless he wants to look like Jared Leto in a Star Wars fanfilm???), best known as one of the founders of T.O. electro-skronk instrumentalists Holy Fuck, has a really great singing voice. He played songs from his new album Coyotes and closed with a sweet Kim Mitchell cover. I've long and loudly argued for a critical second look at Kim Mitchell, so was especially glad to see/hear my cause has found adherents. RIYL: Jason Molina, Chad Vangaalen

mp3: "Easy to Tame" by Kim Mitchell

I know I'm married, but my sister has feelings too

So the Harper gov't thunk twice. But it might be too late for them. Their Stalinist-by-way-of-Tom-Flanagan power play has spurred the long-dormant Liberals into action.
Whoops!

For more LOLZ-Harper, Paul Wells at Macleans laid it on solid yesterday, with bonus awesome photo that will be my new desktop.

Meanwhile, there's a boatload of shows in Vancouver tonight, in case we need something to take our minds of the best political intrigue this country's seen since Gerda Munsinger.
We got AC/DC at GM Place, the Neins Circa at the Western Front, and Martha Wainwright at the Commodore. I'll be at the MW show with my sister, cuz that's the point of having a sister.

mp3: "This Life" by Martha Wainwright
mp3: "Factory" by Martha Wainwright

Just when you thought they couldn't get any lower...

Bad: Stephen Harper's idiot government is going to try to cut subsidies to political parties, for motives that couldn't be more transparent--to crush the Liberal Party. Because a minority of Canadians elected Harper and his mostly anonymous pals so they could carry out a bullshit vendetta against the Loyal Opposition with a reckless disregard for, y'know, actually running the country during a time when it seems like it really fucking matters to be paying attention. Right?
Worse: Harper's Conservatives are going to sell it as if it's some altruistic belt-tightening in the face of the economic crisis that they're not really ready to admit exists (maybe it has something to do with their fear of science), as if the $30 million savings to taxpayers does anything but pale beside the BILLIONS and BILLIONS Harper & Pals have given to the banks. And hey, banks, while I've got your attention, if you didn't set any money aside for a rainy day during the last decade of constant record-breaking banking profits amid the near annihilation of banking jobs, then fuck you. You deserve nothing. If you can't make ends meet between ATM fees and interest--not to mention those shitty calculators you try to sell me when all I want to do is order new cheques--you don't deserve to call yourselves banks. You're just a bunch of ugly buildings with nice chairs that no one wants to sit on because they're afraid to be comfortable around you.
Worsenator: Of course Harper's Tories are going to make this a Confidence Vote, which means either the Liberals will have to vote in favour of getting shafted bigtime or they'll have to pull the plug on a Parliament that's barely had the chance to make ass-prints in its chairs.


mp3: "All The Money I Had Is Gone" by the Deep Dark Woods

A Bulldozer With Apocrypha: OK You Win All Right

After a full weekend of childbirth class, buying and assembling a crib, and thinking of the future, I return to my living room where I still have too many CDs leftover from nine years as a compulsive record reviewer. Each time I've moved--which has been lots--I've divested myself of giant chunks of the collection, but it's such a giant heap that it's hard to notice any difference.
I like to think that my career as a reviewer was notable more for my appetite than for my taste, which was and is constantly under development.
I didn't keep any souvenirs of those days, aside from the hundreds of CDs that keep the north wall of my living room up. That's really enough, I guess. More than enough, for sure. Every now and then, when I'm about to cook or do dishes or whatever else I do in the kitchen, I grab a CD from the wall that I haven't played for a while and give it a listen to see if it's worth keeping around. This is what I found last night.

Wayne Omaha
Let It Mellow
Transsiberian Music
3.5 stars

This is one of those groups (not a dude) that I know next to nothing about. The liner notes list a bunch of first names and feature a vintage map of Woodstock, Ont. Production was done by Dale Morningstar and Andy Magoffin, which means these dudes are probably at least decently known within Toronto's rock scene. And Wayne Omaha sounds like a Toronto rock band. There's that 416/905 blend of Neil Young & Velvet Underground influences that you used to hear in 13 Engines, Lowest of the Low, Rheostatics, whatever. Which is not to say that Wayne Omaha is just another T.O. rocker combo, even though they kinda are. But they're waaaaay looser--which sets them apart. Sometimes it sounds like they're gonna fall apart, but they hold it together, just barely, with melodica and caulking bought on sale with Canadian Tire Money. It's rugged, ragged and far from right, but it sounds good.

mp3: "It's All Right" by Wayne Omaha
mp3: "OK You Win All Right" by Wayne Omaha

Make Mine Midwives!

November seems to be Midwives Awareness Month or something here in BC, and let me tell you, midwives are pretty awesome. I don't know what it's like to go through this with an OB-GYN, and the real moment of truth (birthing) is yet to come, but based on our experiences so far, I have no reservation about recommending midwives to any expecting parent. Well, not any. Obviously, if your pregnancy is complicated and you need a medical practitioner, that's your best choice.
But if your pregnancy is healthy and problem-free? You owe it to yourself and your community to go with a midwife, or more likely, a group of midwives.
Midwifery has been legal and regulated in BC since 1998, and as such it's covered by the BC Medical Services Plan, which reduces the costs and other strains on the provincial healthcare system. Our team at Westside Midwives has been awesome at providing care and information in a very relaxed and calming way. I've been known to be high strung and super-cynical, especially about so-called alternative healthcare*, but the midwives we've dealt with have allayed all my anxieties and not once caused me to roll my eyes. Admittedly, I'm not the patient in this situation, but they've never treated me as though I shouldn't be there or as if I'm not part of the pregnancy (which some of the So-You've-Decided-To-Become-A-Father books have warned against--Question for discussion at another time: Why do 60-to-80% of all fathering books/websites/resources/etc come across as being created by unbalanced men who own more than three firearms?).

mp3: "Rock the Cradle Alone" by Nimrod Workman


* Don't get me started.

Toronto enough tonight?

Hogtown get ready for the bossest hog of all! Tonight, for one night only, Jesse Matheson & His Midnight Snacks will grace the stage at the legendary Horseshoe Tavern. FOR FREE!

Jesse, if you say it all fancy-like, sounds like French for "I know". Which is what you can say now if someone asks you where Jesse is playing tonight.

My other brother, who lives in Toronto will be there too, which makes me the other brother right now.

mp3: "Nothing at All" by Jesse Matheson

If you're not the new Dylan, who are you?

A week ago, Sound Salvation Army's Pat bemoaned the, well, Dylan-ness of Dylan. That ultimately punk rock way that Dylan has always managed to command respect and contempt at the same time from the same people. I didn't see the current tour, so I don't know. I saw him ten years ago at what was then called the Agridome, and, well, it was pretty damn cool. It was Dylan, knocking out hot guitar and plowing through a bunch of songs that half the world knows at least some of the words to. This tour saw Dylan play keyboards, which is less hot than guitar, as everyone knows, and also, according to the Winnipeg Sun, Dylan wore leather pants. Which, y'know, not cool, Bob. Leather pants, if you're not actually riding a motorcycle, only put your judgment into question. That's all they do. So this is not to call Pat out for being wrong. He's probably right.
But it got me thinking, I might have a higher tolerance--or even preference for folks who don't sing right. Off tune, off beat, oh yeah, give it to me! And truthfully, there's a case to be made that these singers who aren't blessed with a naturally redolent voice are actually better singers than the ones who were mellifluous to begin with. To create something aesthetically pleasing out of something unpleasant is true craftsmanship, and I'll roll my eyes at anyone who says otherwise.
All of which is just preamble to praise Andre Ethier, who sometimes sounds so much like Bob Dylan that you almost think he's trying to be Leonard Cohen.
Last summer, when I was in Regina, Dave and I were catching up on good records that had come out since last we spoke, and Andre Ethier's On Blue Fog album was one of them. Any Andre Ethier album is a good one and will definitely scratch yr nu-Dillung fever, but still give you a lot more. An Andre Ethier album you might not know about, unless you live in Peterborough (which sounds like a made-up place--I've never met anyone from there), is Dear Stranger, which is actually a Silver Hearts album. The Silver Hearts are a big folk/country band from Ptrbrgh (it looks more authentic w/o vowels) who have made some albums of note (I do remember hearing about that Rain Dogs remake), but seemingly have not toured beyond their little corner of the country, despite playing country/western music. Go figure.

mp3: "Nothing Is Written In Stone" by Andre Ethier
mp3: "Last Real Poet" by the Silver Hearts

EDIT/UPDATE: mp3 link fixed
bonus mp3: "Last Days of Chez Nous" by the Silver Hearts (not an Ethier tune, but 100% worthwhile if you love cruel honkytonk break-up songs)

Friday Roundup

Vancouver: Take your mayoral pick: A dude who skimps on transit fare or a dude who put his personal ambition ahead of his own party's welfare in a way that would even make Paul Martin embarrassed.

The 2010 Olympics want to control your entire life. And not in a good way. Next up: mass evacuation of all Vancouverites who don't work for official Olympic sponsors?

The Danks play at the Biltmore tonight with Two Hours Traffic. But me? I'll be at Louis CK.

mp3: "I Mean, Come On" by the Danks

(CanWest) Global un-Warming

CanWest Global announced Wednesday they'll be cutting 560 jobs, or 5% of their workforce. Some of the finest people I know work for CanWest, and I hope they're okay.
Further says the CP, "The company will also cut the physical size of some newspapers to reduce costs and focus efforts on expanding digital media operations."
That sounds dismal and calls to mind CanWest's failed Dose commuter tabloid, the horridness of commuter tabloids in general, and usually awful programming on so-called specialty cable.
Commuter tabloids are generally barely worth what you pay for them, unless it's raining and you need something to put between your dry pants and a wet bench on the bus. And don't get me started on their columnists--all of them--but, hey, I like to imagine that since they write for a publication that's handed out for free, the columnists are probably writing on a volunteer-basis, and so I try to cut them a bit of slack.
CanWest has never really had a good grasp on what makes a good newspaper, though the full blame for the National Post can't really be laid entirely at their feet. What people want in a local newspaper, meanwhile, seems so obvious: quality local content. And yet that's what always seems to go on the chopping block whenever convergence rears its head. There are hundreds of places to get national and international news, but there will always be demand for a good local daily newspaper--even in the digital age. With the whole planet at our fingertips online, communities need to know about and see themselves that much more.
Case in point: the two federal elections this fall. Okay, fair enough, the US election was genuinely exciting and historic on a number of levels. But I was appalled at how little heat the Canadian election generated (and obviously, that was part of Harper's gameplan in calling the vote amid the billion-dollar fervour of the US campaign) among Canadians. This shit matters. A lot more than Tina Fey in a bad blazer. But the media seemed just as disinterested in the Canadian election as, well, the nearly 41% of Canadians who didn't even bother voting.

mp3: "Folksong Oblivion" by the Phantom Band

You mean I gotta vote on my day off???

Sick of elections yet? Too bad if you live in BC where municipal elections are set to take place this Saturday, November 15. Saturday??? What the heck is that all about? The rest of the country does their voting during the week, which seems natural and good. But BC likes to think of itself as supernatural, so go figure.

Having spent not quite as much time as I'd like lately engrossed in Lee Henderson's The Man Game, a wrasslin' epic set in an alternate universe 1880s Vancouver, I kinda thought there might be some ridiculous reason going back to frontier times. Back in Regina, my go-to-guy on weird and interesting civic/historical factoids was Will Chabun, a veritible warehouse of Saskploitative arcana. But if Will has a Vancouver counterpart, I've yet to meet him or her. So I asked Frances Bula, longtime Vancouver reporter and probably the best blogger on civic issues around. Even the execrable Alex G. Tsukamis reads her blog! Maybe I didn't phrase the question enticingly enough, or maybe I'm the only one who finds this interesting, but here's the complete reply I got from Bula:

Not sure why it is Saturday, but it's been that way forever. Third Saturday in November, written right into the legislation.

At least it's in the fall, and not the spring, like BC's provincial elections.

Saturday or not, we still gotta vote, and to be honest, I've barely got a clue who to vote for, and I'm actually interested in this stuff!

Thank You, Jim Flaherty, For Thinking Of The Banks

Lately, I've been losing sleep, worrying about the well-being of our precious banks. Luckily, I'm not the only who cares. The good ol' Harper gov't has been caring about banks too, why they must have worked through Remembrance Day figuring out this one. Well, back to bed, Canada!

mp3: "The Bank" by Louis CK
mp3: "End of Bank" by Louis CK

P.S. Louis CK is in Vancouver on Friday at the Vogue.

Great Shadows: great song

Josh Reichmann used to be in Tangiers, a kick-ass Toronto band that had one or two former players from the Deadly Snakes. Tangiers released three excellent records of fraught, garage-y soul rock between 2003 and 2005. That's, like, one record a year. Now Josh Reichmann's got a sweaty new band, an Oracle Band, and they've just released their first EP, Life Is Legal, out now on Paper Bag Records. If you were on Paper Bag's mailing list during the week of Oct. 7th, you woulda got a free download of the whole EP. Which is a great reason to sign up now, just in case there's more goodies to come (not necessarily an endorsement)!

Josh Reichmann/Oracle Band is in Vancouver tomorrow night, Nov. 11, at the Media Club.

mp3: "Great Shadows" by Josh Reichmann/Oracle Band
mp3: "Bones to Match the Heart" by Tangiers (from their middle album, Never Bring You Pleasure)

Vancouver City Limits

Went down to watch the brother rock the house at Vancouver City Limits last night. Hosted at the Beaumont Studios at W. 5th & Alberta (incidentally, that's nowhere near the actual Vancouver city limits) every Monday night, VCL is an intimate mostly roots and singer-songwriter music showcase series worth checking out. It's in a rehearsal space with soft seats, and only holds about 50 people. Each show features three acts, and the folks who put it on take video of the concert and then post one nicely edited song from each performance onto the Youtube.
I haven't heard of any of the other performers, and a lot of them seem to be a little outside of my particular tastes in music, but in terms of live music settings, Vancouver City Limits is one of the best venues.

A Bulldozer With Apocrypha: Part of What it's There for is to Make People Stupid

Between the Augusts of 1997 and 2006, the main thing I did was write record reviews. I wrote 'em for free and I wrote 'em for pay, and I wrote 'em still when I had nothing to say*. It was, at first, good training for writing. I mean, it was writing, but it was also a bunch of other things. Mainly, it was me teaching myself to write. I've had no instruction in composition since high school, and what mentorship I've had has been indirect. For a long time it felt like I had to rediscover fire with each piece I did, and I wasted a lot time at the top of a hill with twigs in my hands, screaming for the lightning to come.
Eventually, I got pretty good. As a writer. I'm not so foolish that I don't recognize the progress I've made, and I'm not so smug and condescending that I'll pretend otherwise. But I don't think I was ever that good as a reviewer. I don't know that a reviewer who glommed on to Richard Meltzer so early in their career ever really had a chance. I was only just starting to make a little coin from the hustle when Meltzer told me, "I think a lot of work has to be done in ignoring the immensity of it and writing about any little particle of it. It's a big monster, rock. And it exists for certain pre-ordained reasons that were not part of the package once. Part of what it's there for is to make people stupid. To make people cease to resist. It's crowd control."

mp3: "Goodbye Pork Pie Cravat" by Richard Meltzer (last known sighting)

So I pretty much started off wrong. I mean, aside from Meltzer, I barely read any music writing before I started doing it. I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn't really care, just as long as I was doing. Along the way, though, I did start reading other rock-write, and along with the Hemingway, Brautigan, Kerouac, Thompson (both Jim and Hunter S.), Richler, Tosches, and Doestoevsky I was reading back when I was still soft and malleable, it creeped into my own writing and I eventually started to recognize my stuff as actual rock-write, or at least wrock-rite. And then I started doing interviews and profiles and the odd feature (like when I was Santa!), but record reviews were always my bread and free CDs were my butter.
I pretty quickly got to the point where I was getting about 10x more CDs every week than I could ever hope to review, never mind listen to. Most of the time I selected which CD would get the honour of 150 of my words by no less arbitrary means than do I have a good joke I could hang around the album?
I had a lot of good jokes, and probably would've been better off writing record reviews disguised as comedy routines than vice versa, but no one was offering me 10-to-25 cents/word for comedy routines four-to-eight times a month. Do the math, in Regina, in the early 2000s, you could almost pay your rent on that. You couldn't eat or turn on the lights, but you could pay your rent. Wait a minute, I just did the math, you couldn't pay your rent on record reviews, but you could probably pay one bill. Like maybe your phone bill, if you didn't have any friends.
Anyway, good times. I wrote for dailies, weeklies, bi-weeklies, monthlies, bi-monthlies, and I even did one assignment for a quarterly, though I never got paid for it, even though the peice ran (minus my byline, which is why I missed it for over a year, which kinda makes it my fault for not getting paid--well no, it's still Mr. Campbell's fault, and I'd still like the money). And for all the money I wasn't making from my writing (or a variety of dayjobs), I always had a giant box of CDs to sell at the end of the month.
But I also had an ever-growing number of boxes full of CDs that I hadn't yet reviewed for whatever reason, but still loved and intended to review someday.
SOMEDAY = TODAY!

Joel RL Phelps The Downer Trio
Customs
Moneyshot Records
2004
4 stars

Phelps used to be in Silkworm, who may have opened for Shellac in Regina in 1999. But at the time Customs came out, I kept getting Silkworm and Spoon mixed up, so don't count on it. Phelps left the band, moved to the Kootenays or somewhere, and started the Downer Trio. Which is exactly what it sounds like, ie, not a band for your wedding. I mentioned Shellac earlier and now I'm gonna call back to that, because they are/were(?) also a trio that specialized in downers with monstrous percussion. So if you like that, you'll like this. But if you prefer the brutally exposed emotional honesty of the Mountain Goats, you will also like Customs. Phelps treads both the power-rocker and the troubadour (seriously, there's some non-hyphenated folk troubadour stuff on this alb) paths, usually at the same time, and usually with a sense of macho grace that thoroughly distinguishes him from either of the bands I just compared him to.
Customs, like the rest of Phelps's Downer Trio stuff, is currently out of print, which is a fucking shame. Phelps seems to have disappeared from the music bizz altogether in the last four years, which, y'know, good for him/bad for us.

mp3: "From Up Here" by Joel RL Phelps Downer Trio - This is the first cut, and it starts off so tough and crunchy, but then a steel drum comes in doesn't change the tone or tenor, but gives it something unexpected, something perfect.

mp3: "Kelly Grand Forks" by Joel RL Phelps Downer Trio - My parents lived in Grand Forks, BC before I was born. Then, after I was born, I lived not all that far from Grand Forks, ND, though I never went there. This song also features amazing percussion, but I like it even more for the cutting lyrics like "you can freeze your faith and loyalty because that's what winter's for".

*You too can write a country & western hit!

Need vs. Want

The good people of Shazhmm look at Herbie Archives Vol. 1 and make my mouth water. The Fat Fury! Frankenstein! Possible multiple Frankensteins! Hubba 2x.
Of course, the last thing I need right now is $50 collection of comics from the 60s. But a boy can dream, can't he?

mp3: "Sweatshirt Cowboy" by the Woodsmen
mp3: "I Been Rich All My Life" by the Woodsmen

don't talk to me about 2.0

A little over a month ago I went to a party. I know, bad idea. It was mostly okay, work-related, lotsa people I actually like, etc. But somehow I got cornered into a conversation with a fella who seemed intent on impressing me with the fact that he works in "Web 2.0, you know what that is?"

"Um, that means you're on Facebook?"

I spent the next 25 minutes in the year 2006. And yeah, basically the dude sets up Facebook accounts for businesses. Which is fine, but the guy had that evangelical zeal for "interactive online community" that inevitably trumps content or even function. Which is, like, at the corner of Nowhere Street and Whocares Avenue. My unwelcome Ajax tutorial finally ended when I admitted to having a blog but not having a solid SEO strategy.

mp3: "Narrow Minds" by Angil and the Hidden Tracks

A little late, but still ahead of the release show!

So our ol' pals the Neins Circa have a new rekkid out, and it's a concept EP devoted to the one and only C.S. Rippen, best known as the boffo guitarist of the Tin Cup (as in Roger Dean Young & the...). As you can see, the EP was in stores over a month ago, but I was not in a store until Saturday, so whatcha gonna do?

But the Neins Circa themselves were out on tour across the country all fall, so the CD release show hasn't even happened yet!
You can be a part of the magic on Friday, November 28 at the Western Front, 303 E. 8th. Word around town is that the Ripper himself will be there and will be a solo set. NICE.

mp3: "Little Chris" by the Neins Circa

A Song and a Novel About a Haunted House and

The spookiest day of the year is here, and since there's no upcoming Batman movie to hype (yet), I'm gonna recommend a novel. Richard Brautigan's The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western is not necessarily more spooky than Trout Fishing in America or Sombrero Fallout, but if you've recently read Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree, why not? It's as much a Western as it is a Horror novel, but it's not really either in anyway that fevered fans of either genre will recognize. Mostly it's a Brautigan novel, and it's one I no longer have a copy of--haven't for a dozen years. Someday I'll build a nice library of Brautigan volumes, but I'm gonna wait until I have a big house to haunt with shelves and nooks and secret passages.

mp3: "Be the Last to Stay in a Haunted House" by the Howling Hex

flashback: 1997

A great couple of posts by Wade regarding the nineties. Which is an interesting coincidence, since I'm currently knee-deep (just one knee) in composing a weird remembrance of 1992 that has something to do with something but has also become a thing of its own.



mp3: Live in Toronto, 1997 by Bluebeard

FemBots tonight

FemBots are a very excellent band from Toronto and they are playing tonight in Vancouver at the Railway Club. It would behoove you to attend. I saw them in the spring of oh-six in at the Exchange in Regina on a bill with Cuff the Duke and the Hylozoists. As you might be able to imagine, it was a pretty amazing night of music. FemBots sort of occupy the middle ground between the Hylozoists' percussive adventurism and Cuff the Duke's rocko-balladry.
Tonight they're playing with the also excellent Octoberman, who I've never seen live, but I think I interviewed him/them at one point (which is a safe bet for any CanRock outfit who operated between 1997 and 2006).

mp3: "Good Days" by FemBots
mp3: "Run from Safety" by Octoberman

read this

One of the best articles (op-ed) on InSite and Harm Reduction I've ever read (from yesterday's Globe & Mail).

Proof that I'm not making good use of my 'free' time

Sometimes, I just sit at my computer with Vic Chesnutt on my headphones, following one link to another until I don't know how I got where I am, but I'm glad I've arrived. This is where I ended up tonight.

SHAZHMMM... - An extremely likable comic review site with a winning he said/she said thing going on. It's like Siskel & Ebert but you read it. And it's about comics. But, y'know, two intelligent, articulate people with broad tastes discussing new releases (and sometimes older stuff).

Areas of My Expertise - You know John Hodgman. But did you know he wrote a book? But did you know he wrote another?

mp3: "Wallace Stevens" by Vic Chesnutt

Who Blotches the Blotchmen?

If you like comics and plums, you can't miss with this hilariously excellent webcomic from Kevin Cannon.

Party in the hood tomorrow night!

Do you like barbecues, saving lives and free music? Get on down to 139 E. Hastings on Thurs., Oct 23 to eat some free burgers, check out Bedouin Soundclash, and show some love and support for InSite, Vancouver's Supervised Injection Site. With the Harper Conservatives returned to a minority gov't, it's more important than ever to let them know that Canadians will not abide their attempts to condemn drug addicts to "a short and miserable life" when we have the tools to provide dignity, survival, and hope for a better tomorrow. Party starts around 3:30 p.m., and Bedouin Soundclash goes on around 6:30 p.m. Word has it Bend Sinister will also be playing.

mp3: "Shelter" by Bedouin Soundclash

It was the day before Columbus Day, so I discovered America

We drove down to Seattle on Sunday. When I say "we drove," what I mean is Nicole drove. I don't drive. I guess you could say it's by choice. Not my choice, but, rather a series of poor choices in my past.

The Pacific Northwest US in the fall is a lot like the lower mainland in the fall. Only with more Giant Sand. Same amount of Chad Vangaalen, though.

But they were both in the same spot on Sunday night, the Triple Door. It's a reformed supper club on Union Street with a tasty menu and excellent sightlines.

C-van-G was up first, just him and his drummer. "Our bass player left," he said. Mostly C-van-G played one of those electronic electric guitars like Lou Reed played on the Velvets reunion, which is a good guitar to play if you don't have a bass player, because it gives a big sound. Vangaalen & drums played really well, as we noshed on green beans and papaya salad. The only thing was C-van-G sang all of his songs in his falsetto-y voice, which is cool, especially on songs like "Willow Tree" and "City of Electric Light", but I know he has more range than that.

Giant Sand, which is Howe Gelb and three Danes these days, was something else, man. "So," Gelb gravelled, "did you enjoy dinner? Are we dessert? Are we desert? Are we dez-zert?"

They mostly played from proVISIONS, the new Giant Sand alb, but also culled from other rekkids, including Gelb's 'Sno Angel Like You--maybe the greatest record ever. Gelb played a lot of guitar, but also played some piano--both keys and strings. Sometimes he'd start in one song, and then finish in another. And they skipped all my favourite songs, like "Out There" and "Well Enough Alone" from the new album, but did play a real fine take on "Ain't Misbehavin'" and encored with "Shiver".

Howe bemoaned the malfunction, and the ramifications thereof, of his blue effects pedal, but rejoiced in the ultra-reverb of his yellow pedal. He lit feedback cherrybombs under the soft-cushioned seats of the dinner club crowd, myself included, who'd maybe become a little too comfortable amid the fine food, luxury and sophisticated Americana leanings. It was kinda monstrous, kinda beautiful, all at the same time. Just like America.

We got tunes today from Seattle cowboy band who wear masks. Brent Amaker & the Rodeo's new album Howdy Do! is expected in November, and they'll spend the rest of the year playing shows in the US of A.

mp3: "When Love Gets to a Man" by Brent Amaker & the Rodeo
mp3: "Girls Are Good For Lots of Things" by Brent Amaker & the Rodeo

I was away for a week, did I miss anything?

If I didn't clearly remember voting (early), I might wonder if we even had an election this past week. Nothing seems to have changed and no one seems that interested in talking about it anymore.
While Harper's Tories have gained a substantial number of new seats, their gains in the popular vote were marginal. The difference between popular vote and seats won is pretty striking in general, especially comparing the numbers of both for the Bloc versus the Greens. No wonder the Greens are such big fans of proportional representation.
As I write, Dion is probably drafting his resignation speech. Which means that Harper--who has now failed to win a majority government twice in less than three years and faced zero public criticism from within his own party--will get a free ride in Parliament for at least another year as the Grits deal with their internal issues at the expense of the majority of Canadians. You know, the ones who didn't vote for Harper and do not want to him to have a de facto majority government, which is what he gets when the Liberals prop up his minority by abstaining from voting in Parliament because they're still unprepared to face the electorate.
The Liberals' bullshit head-in-the-sand technique not only makes them look ineffective and gives Harper the power to do as he pleases, it also gives the NDP room to posture and position themselves as English-speaking Canada's official opposition without fear that they'll trigger yet another election.
Can the federal Liberals even survive another two years in the wilderness? It will be next spring at the earliest before they elect a new leader. But will another struggle between Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff strengthen the beleaguered party, or will it just enflame the grudges between the various Liberal factions who did a terrible job of pretending to present a united front during this fall's campaign?
There will be much made of Stephane Dion's disgraceful position of being only the second leader of the federal Liberals in history not to wear the Right-Honourable title of Prime Minister (who was the other? who cares?), and Dion has earned that ignoble distinction for failing to galvanize his own party, never mind the Canadian people. But these fancy-pants Liberal Insiders we keep hearing about, who have been whispering off the record about their dislike for Dion for the last 24 months, surely must bear the weight of perpetuating the image of a party so smugly convinced it is "The Natural Ruling Party" of Canada that it ignores its Parliamentary duty, ignores the electorate who voted for it, and even ignore the basic political necessity of effectively criticizing the competition.
It's this last one that bothers me the most. Harper's first term in government was so obviously sleazy and contemptible that it should have been a slam-dunk to turf his daycare-killing, climate-change-denying ass. But nobody called him on it. He didn't have to run on his record, he didn't even have to run on a platform. The Liberals effectively handed Harper this election, and if they don't get their shit together and learn how to be the Official Opposition they were elected as, they certainly won't find their way back to Government in another two years, when Harper calls his next snap election.

mp3: "City of Electric Light" by Chad VanGaalen

Vote Your Own Country

Things to think about when you vote on Tuesday:

"Dead people don't detox." There are approximately 4,700 injection-drug users (PDF) in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Vancouver Coastal Health has 316 detox beds (PDF). So even if everybody woke up tomorrow morning ready to take that step toward recovery, the support isn't there for them all. In the meantime, we as a society can do something to reduce the harm (PDF) drug addiction creates for both addicts and the public. In Vancouver, we have a Supervised Injection Site that helps prevent overdose deaths, the transmission of HIV and Hep C, connects users with health care treatment and increases their chances of entering detox and recovery. Stephen Harper's Tories want to shut it down and send drug addicts to prison. Prison, it turns out, doesn't help addicts kick. Go figure.

Climate Change is gonna hurt. What's going on now with the economy is a lot like what's happening with the environment. We've been living beyond our means and the payment's coming due. Some things are still manageable, some are gone for good. It's time to grow the fuck up and deal with this.

Good luck, Canada. Hopefully Quebec will pull through for us. See you in ten days or so.

mp3: "Start Your Own Country" by the Parkas

Because you don't spend enough time thinking about comics

Two new comic blogs to tell you about. One of them is hilarious, the other one is Canadian. Not that those are necessarily exclusive concepts, but, um, too often they are.

You Don't Know From Hurt doles out oracle-like opinions on comics before they even come out! They read, or plan to read, a lot of the same comics I plan to read and share a lot of my conflicted feelings on being a grown-ass man reading funnybooks.

Four-Colour Words (note the U) is hosted by The Walrus (again, note the U), and is therefore a little more, um, Seth-positive.

mp3: "Intentions Alone" by the Olympic Symphonium

Because we asked for it

He used to from Ottawa, and now he's from Toronto. Ontario's Andrew Vincent has finally got a new record coming out. Rotten Pear will be released on Kelp Records on or around the US election day, coincidentally one of my brothers' birthday. But which brother? IT'S A MYSTERY.

mp3: "Going Out Tonight" by Andrew Vincent

$ellabration Update!

I've put a bunch more stuff up for sale. Some of it colossally good, some of it abysmally awful. You can decide for yourself which is which. I've still got a tonne more, and finally figured out a sensible plan for moving product (Showcase Presents volumes don't travel well, it's like sticking a phonebook in the mail), so I'll be listing more as the week progresses. Shop soon, shop often, I am always glad to take your money.

mp3: "Stop the Pusher" by Bo Diddley

Belly Full of Fire

There is perhaps no other time in a man's life that he is so plainly shown what a cakeride it is to have a Y chromasome than when he is expecting a child.

Oh sure, payday is a good time to be a man, so's when you have to use the bathroom in a nightclub, or if you'd like to be a Member of Parliament. But skipping out on the rigours of pregancy, well, it kinda makes me want to belch a sigh of manly relief. We get to be a part of Life's Greatest MiracleTM without gaining 30 lbs, suffering wild mood swings, peeing every twenty minutes or losing our taste for green beans (though I suspect Nicole never really liked my green beans and is just using pregnancy as an excuse to put the kibosh on them without hurting my feelings). We're never kicked in the bladder from within, never have to take a break to catch our breath going up the front stairs. All we have to do is raise our game a little bit, be a little quicker to offer foot rubs, pick up a few more household chores, eat two servings of green beans, whatever. Oh yeah, and not brag or complain about how we're a larger portion of the daily things that make life go by--especially when we're doing a terrible job at keeping up with the larger projects like clearing out the clutter (ie, 25 yrs of comics) from the eventual baby room.

Where you run into trouble, though, as an expectant father, is when you're out in public alone. When you're out with your baby mama, at least, people know. Things are going on in your life and you're afforded certain niceties. You can smile at young children with impunity. You can marvel at the souped up Peg Perego travel system and no one bats an eye. Other couples out and about with infants make eye contact and transmit warnings of fatigue--joyous fatigue, but fatigue, don't kid yourself, man. And a pregnant woman alone...forget about it. Nicole has regaled me with stories of walking home (a whole four blocks) with two bags of groceries. Everyone who passed her by looked on with concern and pity. If I'm walking down the street weighed down by cans of refried beans and split pea soup, I better not show any strain or I'll get shanked passing by the D&D store.

It's a sunny afternoon in early September and I'm sitting in the park, alone, reading Dan Fesperman's first novel and drinking a pretty lousy Americano, because Beans is closed on Monday. Despite the sun, I've got a Sarajevo funk on from spending all day with Lie In The Dark. I'm identifying more with Vlado Petric this time around (he's also the lead in Fesperman's second novel, Small Boat of Great Sorrows), because I'm starting to see myself as a father. Like Vlado, I've been separated from my wife and child. He, because they've fled Sarajevo for an indifferent Berlin; me, because I work the nightshift and miss too much time with my growing family. Okay, so it's not really the the same. Not even close. But, y'know, on a metaphoric level... And there's the whole business of how the parts of my family that are not are still contained within a single unit, like a Vancouver Special.

So there's me, Vlado, and hell, why not Rebus? Sitting alone in the park with our inadequate coffee, spending a rare nice day with a book full of gray. Quietly, shamefully, more at home in our morose solitude, in our weird otherness. In my fifth-dimensional imagination, writing is the same as sleuthing, and so my brow is always furrowed with the waves of mystery.

But now it's October, and I'm not on the nightshift anymore. Now the days are gray and wet, though my nights are clear. It's a tradeoff, but it's worth it. Now I'm home when it matters to be home, when home is home and not a bunch of rooms full of books and comics that I can't figure out what to do with.

And I've got next week off, which means I'll be out of the country when the election results come in. With any luck, I'll be somewhere without access to the election results. I'll be in some cabin by the ocean, reading by the shine of a lighthouse.

But first, I'll be in Seattle, watching Giant Sand (and Chad Van Gaalen) with my wife and fetus. I think I've already mentioned how my life is nearly perfect.

mp3: "Belly Full of Fire" by Giant Sand
mp3: "Well Enough Alone" by Giant Sand

For realz, ol' buddy, ol' Palliser?

The Leader-Post says the Conservative Party has the Regina riding of Palliser (where I grew up) all but locked. The poll results seem less of a feat for the Tories, with 43.3% of decided voters, when you look at a few things.

First of all, both the NDP and Liberals have very strong candidates running against the Tories' Ray Boughen. The NDP, with the support of 35.7% of decided voters are running Don Mitchell, who, like Boughen, is a former mayor of Moose Jaw. Mitchell's got a long history of political and social activism in the Em-Jay of Ess-Kay (he's also the brother of Ken Mitchell, who once wrote a rock opera with Humphrey and the Dumptrucks) going back to when political and social activism meant something. The Liberals, with the support of a disappointing 17.3%, have a star candidate in former Regina police chief Cal Johnston. I had hopes in the early days of this election of Johnston as Justice Minister, but it's sadly obvious that won't happening soon. Johnston surely has better ideas for improving the justice system than Harper's Fresh Meat approach.

At first it seems strange that a riding that includes my sentimental favourite part of Regina is being dominated by Moose Javians. But then, Regina has never really been much of a breeding ground for politicians who "matter". Provincially, most of our best pols have traditionally been either rural, or from Saskatoon. And federally, well, what can we say about Ralph Goodale anyway? Municipally, well, fuck, that's depressing.

What makes Boughen's not-quite-insurmountable lead--along with the likelihood of another near-sweep for the Tories in Saskatchewan--all the more depressing, though, is how shitty the Conservative Party presence has been in Saskatchewan lately. Mostly, the Saskatchewan Tory Candidates are doing their best to stay out of public view, as Murray Mandryk tells us. From Gerry Ritz to Tom Lukiwski to Michelle Hunter, Saskatchewan Conservative candidates have decided that their best strategy for election or re-election is to make themselves scarce.

Sadly, it seems like a winning strategy. It seems like only Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is the only person on the federal scene willing to call the Harper government on their broken deals with Saskatchewan.

Maybe the drubbing Potash Corp. has taken on the markets this week will give my dear Saskatchewan second thoughts about the blank cheque they're about to write Harper.

mp3: "Summertime" by Feuermusik

If you look up "uh-oh" in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary...

Uh-oh.

The Revolution Will Not Be Twittered

(via Signalresponse)

highlights from pmharper:

• Tonight I attended my high school reunion in Toronto. It was great to see old friends. 06:44 PM September 27, 2008
• Great rally in Rockland, Ontario. Photos at http://tinyurl.com/4q9ne5 05:29 PM September 19, 2008
• Attended a campaign rally in Chicoutimi, Québec. 04:29 PM September 17, 2008

highlights from jacklayton:

• FACTCHECK: Oil companies did benefit from Harper's economic policies: http://www.ndp.ca/page/7113 about 2 hours ago
• getting ready for tonight's debate in french, tomorrow's in english... about 14 hours ago
• Getting ready for the debates... French language debate’s tomorrow night. 02:26 PM September 30, 2008

highlights from liberaltour:

• Stéphane Dion won decisively! He clearly demonstrated that he is the only leader with a credible plan for Canada's economy! about 1 hour ago
• Dion does what Harper refuses: to talk with ordinary Canadians. Today, Stéphane went to Algonquin College and met with students and staff. 11:17 AM September 29, 2008
• "Nervous energy gets my adrenaline flowing" was how Stéphane answered a question about the debates next week. More Dion unplugged to come. 12:24 PM September 27, 2008

I can't help but believe that Harper feeds his own Twitter. It has that terse, unreflective tone of a guy who can't hug his kids in public. The whole Politics 2.0 remains kinda forced and more than a little skeevy. It's a Catch-22. If you're running for Parliament, and you don't have Facebook profile, people will think you're a hopelessly out-of-touch fuddy-duddy. If you do have a Facebook profile, they'll know that you are.

mp3: "Cheap Wine Time" by RTX (courtesy Drag City, get it while it's up)

You're a sensitive nighttime creature, but it's over

God bless you Cam Dilworth, wherever you are tonight.



Goodbye to the night, hello to the day!

I can't shake this guy

I saw Lee Henderson again tonight.
I was on Carrall Street, taking the first part of the dinner break of my last nightshift. I missed most of the art, but there was still some lingering around, mixing in with the panhandlers, nightclubbers and other Gastown regulars. He was in a closed circle of conversation. I was eating streetza (which has mysteriously dropped back down to a dollar a slice, after rising to $1.25 last January and then peaking at $1.50 this summer). I thought about going over and introducing myself, but then I saw some coworkers and decided to make awkward smalltalk with them instead.
It's the second time Henderson crept into my life today. I woke up sometime before noon to Jian Ghomeshi promoting tomorrow's episode of Q, where Henderson will argue the relevancy of The Catcher In The Rye.
I first read Catcher in the ninth grade, during my one-year stint at Evan Hardy. Henderson was in Grade 12 that year, and was one of the editors of Crampl, the school's literary and art annual that published at least one of my poems and a pencil drawing of Sting(who I had seen in concert the summer before) I may have traced. Probably not though, as I was drawing a lot that year, mostly copying off Keith Giffen's Legion of Super-Heroes art. I borrowed the book from the school library, which makes it entirely possible that Henderson and I both read The Catcher In The Rye for the first time from the same volume. Which is interesting and isn't. I dunno, it's interesting to me.
Henderson's got a new book out called The Man Game. It looks good. It looks real good. My current moratorium on new books is really hard to uphold. I reviewed his book of short stories, The Broken Record Technique, for the P-Dog way back when. And also interviewed him via email, which is more like exchanging emails and less like interviewing.
On Sunday, I saw him read at the Word on the Street fair downtown. I laughed a little at a part no one else laughed at, more an appreciative laugh at a fine turn of words than a laugh-at-a-joke laugh. I think he looked at me, but I was way in the back.
About a month ago, co-worker Ryan--the man I've spent nearly every single night with for the last year--told me that I look just like Neal Henderson, "you know, the writer?"
What did he write?
"The Man Game."
This was before the book had even been reviewed by the Globe & Mail.
Oh, you mean Lee Henderson.
"Yeah, whatever. You look just like him. We were riding the bus the other day, and this girl was had his book, and she was talking on her cell. She was saying that the book was kind of boring, but she had to read it for a class or something. And Neal I mean Lee was right there. I asked him how that made him feel, and he...."
And then Ryan shrugged his shoulders.
When I got back from my walkabout tonight, I looked in the mirror. I tried to see what Ryan was talking about. Sure, both Henderson and I wear glasses. And we are both wearing checked button-up shirts tonight, just as we both were on Sunday. That's when I noticed a small patch of stubble I missed when I shaved this afternoon. I looked at the shadows under my eyes, the result of two years of working nights. Two years of being underslept and malnourished and missing out on spending time with my wife (who's only been my wife for two months, but, y'know). That all comes to an end tonight. This is my last night shift. I should be commemorating it somehow, but instead I'm thinking about how close Lee Henderson's shave looked tonight. I'm thinking that he doesn't drowsily scrub his face with an electric razor once every couple of days like some character in a Rebus novel. I'm thinking that he takes the time, uses a hot towel and everything. Maybe even eucalyptus. I bet he uses a straightblade, an antique, with something ruggedly arcane on the celluloid handle. Something like a lighthouse with a sea serpent wrapped around it, or well, probably something that looks like an early Marcel Dzama drawing. (Dzama illustrated The Broken Record Technique, so, like, go figure.)

video: "Shiver" by Giant Sand

I was there...

Priced to move!

Starting yesterday, and continuing until it's all gone, lots of comics up for sale, dirt cheap! I'll be adding more everyday, as I get the hang of it. So far I've got some classic Showcase Presents volumes up and there's more where that came from, but I'll be adding collected editions/graphic novels of Green Lantern, the Flash, JLA, Green Arrow, Queen & Country, Batman, Daredevil, Gotham Central (what? yeah!) and assorted other goodies. If there's anything you're curious about, hit me up. I'm hoping to organize some of my single issues into bundles, but that may take a while. Everything's in pretty good shape, and most of it's good comics.

mp3: "Going Out of My Mind Sale" by Johnny Adams

Well, that's one strategy against child poverty...

Brad Wall, Premier of Saskatchewan, wants to see more 15-yr-olds in the workforce. When minimum wage employers are having a hard time finding people willing to work for wages that don't cover the cost of living, Wall sees an opportunity. Not to let the business community catch up with the supposed free market economy that Wall and his Sask Party buddies so proudly espouse, where labour is no longer a buyer's market and demands fair and dignified wages. No, Wall sees a chance not just to turn back the clock to a time when it wasn't uncommon for Saskatchewan teenagers to drop out before they finished high school, but also to put those supple and small young hands to work folding burger wrappers more nimbly than full-grown adult hands can.
In some jurisdictions, someone illegally employing nearly two dozen underage workers might be looking at criminal charges. But not in Brad Wall's Saskatchewan.

mp3: "Done Got Old" by the Heartless Bastards

Even my rejection letters make me happy

"Fucking good writing and clearly informed but funny too," the editor wrote. Excepting only "mind-bogglingly large cheque enclosed", these are the words you most hope to read in reply to a submission query.

My life is insanely great right now. It's not perfect, not by a long shot. But stepping back and looking at the big picture, things have never been better. I could list them all, but that'd just be cocky, and would probably jinx all the great things that are right around the corner.

mp3: "I Believe In You" by Lambchop

"We had to endure it and want our revenge."

Ebert again. On the role of The Critic. Right now The New is more in need of discovery and defence than ever before, as our politicians try to score points by railing against imaginary elites they fear secretly rule the world.

And there's no bigger secret elite the rockers of Saskatoon. They're so secret, hardly anyone's ever even of heard of them, let alone heard 'em. So consider yourself priveliged. You're about to get Saved By Saskatoon, which is the name of a brand new compilation from Saved By Radio/Saved By Vinyl, a Calgary record label that puts out some of the finest CanRock this side of the Canadian Sheild.

mp3: "Class Action Lawsuit" by Junior Pantherz
mp3: "My Ghost Your Ghost" by Pearson

I think the Invisible Hand that guides the Economy just touched me under my bathing suit...

But seriously, folks... I guess this the kind of intervention that results from economic policy that doesn't believe in government intervention. Strangely, Stephen Harper doesn't want to influence any elections, not the one down there, and especially not the one up here, by giving his opinion. Probably because in the past he's supported and promoted the same kind of laissez-faire approach to the economy that led what looks to be of the biggest corporate welfare grabs in history. As the NY Times puts it, "It is the financial equivalent of the Patriot Act."

The Rock & Roll equivalent of the Patriot Act, an album called Going Steady, meanwhile, was released in Regina over the weekend. The mighty Rah Rah, a conglomerate of kids born in an era when jowled titans like John Crosbie and Joe Clark roamed the earth. They write beautiful songs about the ugly things, and they live in Regina--where there's a lot of ugly things to write about. I'm still waiting for a song about the old Superstore building where Downtown meets North Central, where the city shrugs its shoulders and claims no responsibility. While I wait, though, here's a song that mentions good ol' Dave Batters, the beleagured outgoing Tory MP for Palliser. Immortalized in song! That oughtta raise his spirits.


mp3: "The Innocent One" by Rah Rah

"I'm surprised that you're surprised..."

Hilarious/terrifying FOX news video.

It's Strange How I Admire Old Men

There is perhaps no other time in a man's life when he so scrutinizes the stuff his idols are made of than when he's making a list of potential names for his firstborn child. We've come to an informal agreement that I'm in charge of coming up with male names, and Nicole's handling female names. It might seem a little sexist on the surface, but, y'know, Nicole didn't spend the better part of her pre-adolescence thinking up names she'd rather be called than Emmet*. Well, I hope she didn't. That would be kinda disturbing if she did.

It's become painfully obvious to me that my heroes have always been either shitheels or schmucks--and occasionally a little of both. My favourite writers are generally the worst of the lot, a trainwreck of drunks, creeps, and the odd anti-semite. My favourite fictional characters don't fare much better, from crypto-fascists to workaholic louts. As always, the literary world has let me down.

Jazzbos shine a little brighter in the character department, but their names tend towards being so common their significance would be lost. So scratch Ken, Diz, or Albert. There's a certain amount of cachet in using jazzers' last names as first names, but that's problematic too. Mingus is a great name for a cat, but a kid? Dolphy, meanwhile has two knocks against it. A) I'd really hate for someone to think it's short for Adolph. B) Who the hell wants to go through third grade named Dolphy?

Names is hard. Hard like math. But the Theater Fire is easy. Last we heard from the Fort Worth, TX octet, they were travelling undercover as the Howling Hex on You Can't Beat Tomorrow, both the album and the variety show. They've got a new album, Matter and Light, not coming out until December (lotsa fun stuff happening this December! Can't wait!), but were kind enough to send a teaser, which is absolutely the best thing I've heard all year (sorry, everyone else). "Swashbuckler Blues", heard below, recalls Muswell Hillbillies + I dunno, Calexico x just about everything I like in music right now. Watch this space for more on the
Theatre Fire in coming weeks.

mp3: "Swashbuckler Blues" by The Theater Fire

* I have long ago made peace with my first name and come to not only like, but to revel in it.

EDIT: for about 45 minutes, I accidentally had the wrong song linked above. Just long enough for the Hype Machine to pick up on it. Oops. The above song is now corrected, and if you're looking for a hot track from the upcoming Rah Rah album, check back soon!

HOMINA HOMINA LOUIS CK

Crazy. I keep posting, and this page keeps popping up EMPTY. BUMMER. Louis CK is coming to Vancouver. Nov. 14. Vogue Theatre. I AM SO THERE.

Ebert explains Palin

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Roger Ebert is one of my all-time favourite writers. I wrote him a fan letter once, but thanks to a typo--I left out one lousy four-letter word--it came out all wrong. Instead of being an amusing anecdote with what I felt was a clever twist, it ended up being a semi-coherent awshucks-fest. That's what one word can do.

What led me to write was two things. One, Ebert's review of Gus Van Sant's Gerry. The movie that hadn't even been on my radar, but by 2003 I had figured out how read Ebert's copy on the L-P sked in advance of publication and did so often. Two, a friend of my brother told me that his mom was a fan of my writing. They had recently seen me walking down 13th and Jesse's pal pointed me out to his mom. She was surprised at my appearance, she told her son. From the way I wrote, she always thought I would look like Roger Ebert. "I took this," I closed my letter to Ebert with, "as a compliment."

I wouldn't have even known there was anything wrong with my letter if Ebert wasn't a classy enough guy to write back. "From the sounds of it, you do," was his entire missive. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Then I read back over my original. Instead writing that my brother's friend's mom thought I would look like Ebert, I left out look, which made me look like a dumb jerk.

I remember considering writing Ebert again to explain my typo, but finally decided that the best thing to do was not draw more attention to my dumb ass.

Moral: proofread, proofread, proofread

The point of posting this now: Ebert sums up GOP vice-prez wannabe Sarah Palin. While I admire his movie writing to no end, and they more often than not offer up meditations on meatbag existence in general, I sure the hell enjoy it when he steps outside the theatre.

Another Reason to Stick To TV

One of the few things I get to have an active role in during this magical time of expectancy is clearing out my playroom--er, home office--so we can turn it into a baby room. Or a nursery. One or the other. I'm not sure which. I don't even know what the difference is. I think a nursery is supposed to have trees. Or tree-themed wallpaper?

Speaking of trees, mainly what I'm doing is getting rid of books. I love books. I love buying them, I love reading them, I love looking at 'em. Some of my fondest childhood memories are spending what felt like entire afternoons scouring the shelves of the Mayfair Branch of the Saskatoon Public Library, or on special occasions the awesome main branch downtown--whose children's section was the stuff of legend, especially Pooh Corner, which I remember as being accessible only by a tunnel too small for adults to fit. Mainly I was interested in the Hardy Boys series, the old blue hardcovers, which had a strange smell about them I would come to associate with books. For my birthday, maybe my 6th or 7th, I got The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook, which was the most mind-bending piece of literature I'd seen since The Empire Strikes Back Book-on-Record.

A few times, my ambition would get the better of my reading level. I once checked out an Albert Einstein biography that was beyond me, but luckily my mom took a break from the Narnia and Madeleine L'Engle books that were the staples of bedtime to read it to me. Whatever I gleaned from having the book read to me is now forever intermingled with dim memories of the Yahoo Serious movie. Einstein's afterlife, however, I'm much more clear on.

Anyway, the baby room. My books. I've got too many. I need to get rid of some. Right. Because supposedly a baby and a mountain of books can't co-exist. So this afternoon I filled my biggest backpack full of books and trudged over to my favourite used book store on Main Street. It's the place I would go to find the books I have to get rid of if I hadn't already read them. It's curious the way the dynamic changes when the clerk realizes you're in there to get rid of books rather than buy them. When I'm buying books there, there's plenty of chat and small talk, what we in the business like to call relationship-building. When I'm trying to lighten my literary load, on the other hand, it's polite but terse. No small talk. At all.

So the clerk is going through my pile of books. He examines the books and divides them into two piles. With every new volume he rifles through, I have to resist a growing urge to snatch the books back and run down the street screaming, "NEVER! You'll never get my books! They're mine! All mine!"

But really, rationally, what do I need with my old copy of Kerouac's Big Sur? Am I going to read it again? Not a chance. I'd sooner reread Desolation Angels or Dr. Sax anyday. Which is why I'm keeping them. Just in case. I have an unreasonable fantasy that I'm going to reread all my favourite books--not when I'm old, but, like, this weekend. Yeah, fat chance. I get it. So let them take my books. Let someone else carry that weight.

The clerk takes a second look at my run of early 00s Best American Crime Writing anthologies, and suddenly I decide that those are the most indispensible books I've ever owned. Now they're going to be gone forever! I can feel a panic attack coming. The clerk shifts them over to the pile closest to me. "These ones," he says, pointing at that pile of books, "thanks, but no thanks." A wave of relief. Although I'm shocked and a little saddened he didn't want my copy of The Last Honest Man.

The clerk makes me a very reasonable offer on store credit for a little over half the books I lugged in, and I take it. I should take cash, but you get less, and who am I kidding, I'm going to buy more books. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but Friday. Friday, I'm definitely going to buy more books. I've already eyed-up a copy of the recent Houdini biography on the shelf at the front of the store. Sorry, Nicole.

mp3: "Television" by Robyn Hitchcock
mp3: "Television Man" by Man...Or Astro-man?