The Weather Suits My Clothes

It's been a pretty glorious fall day, the kind that makes you wish for a perpetual autumn. But the magical thing about this time of year is its fleetingness. It lasts a little longer out here on the West Coast, but fall on the Prairies is more like a rumour than a season.
Tony Joe White once equated the fall with change, and that seems to work for me. Just like last October, I'm changing addresses. I've got some great new clothes (from my Mtl trip), and I'm SO ready to get to work on a project I've been stewing on for a while. Plus, there might be something absolutely magical in the works.
But first, we've gotta get through this weekend. The big moving day is tomorrow, and I've got some heavy lifting (both literal and metaphoric) to do.
I'd really like to get done early so that I can get out to Rime to see Roger Dean Young & the Tin Cup publicly release their magnificent new album, Threshold. Elephant Island of Victoria is playing with them and they're pretty fine as well. Last time I saw both bands together, they collabed on an absolutely sublime cover of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On". Wouldn't mind experiencing that again.
I've had a couple of weeks with Threshold now, and am just as in love with it as I am with RDY & the TC's previous alb, Casa. "Keremeos" is currently my favourite track, objectively, but ask me again in another week, and I'm sure I'll be fixated on another song.


MP3: "Everybody's Talkin'" by Bill Withers
MP3: "Keremeos" by Roger Dean Young & the Tin Cup

Thursday Night Status Report

We haven't examined the Google Analytics report for two weeks, so let's do that, shall we?

Most surprising location of a repeat visitor: St. Augustine, FL, about which all I know is that it's where Jack Kerouac died.

Most laughalicious place name where someone who reads me lives: Bohemia, NY

Most terrifying term by which someone found this blog: "Pat Fiacco"

Most bizarre search term which led someone to view multiple pages of this blog: "shoes for sale under $30"

Ratio of bemusement to amusement at the idea of the land development south of the Regina Airport being called "Harbour Landing": 83:1

Montreal Field Report #2: Psychedelic Cauliflower

The best thing I did in Montreal was eat. I ate a lot. I even ate something by accident that I would probably never willingly eat.

A few things I discovered about Montreal food:

-Vancouver does Indian and Sushi better and cheaper

-Montreal has some amazing vegetarian places, including Chu Chai, which bizarrely specializes in fake meat dishes (where flesh is replaced by soy and gluten proxies). We actually just ate normal, vegetable-based dishes, and they were pretty damn fine.

-Even though Le Commensal looks like an all-you-can-eat buffet, it's actually a pay-by-weight deal. So you have to try extra hard to curb your a-y-c-e pig-out instincts, lest you get SHOCKED by a $20 tab.

-"Scallopinni Cardinale" is VEAL.

Awesome video promo for my favourite comic of 2007 (so far)

If you haven't read Nick Bertozzi's awesome The Salon yet, you really should.

Un peu de Vancouver a Montreal

mont

just like home
Originally uploaded by emmetmatheson

If you don't look down, Rue St-Laurent looks a lot like Cambie these days. The Main is down to one lane of traffic, and sidewalks seem to haphazardly disintegrate every half block. There's a depressing amount of empty storefronts, and most depressingly, Warshaw's has become a Pharmaprix. I saw Bette Midler in Warshaw's once. I'll never see her in a Pharmaprix. To be more accurate, she'll never see me in one.

Other famous people I have randomly seen:

Tim Matheson (no relation) - maybe. In Yaletown.

Mark Addy - On Yonge St. in Toronto. I was walking down the street, and I saw a face I recognized, but couldn't place. My instinct was that he was someone from Regina, and it wasn't for another two days that I finally placed him as someone I don't actually know. Which made me feel bad about thinking he was a jerk for just walking by.

Chad Kroeger - In Regina, where, oddly enough, about a million dudes have the same hairstyle.

William Shatner - In Banff, where he had just beaten REAL SPACEMAN Buzz Aldrin in a celebrity ski race.

Peter Gzowski - I didn't actually see him, but in the summer of 2001, I answered the phone at work and immediately recognized the voice I heard my mother listening to nearly every morning when I was VERY young.

Eva Mendes - On Hastings, in Vancouver. Interesting fact I learned while spellchecking Mendes's name on IMDB: Underrated actor Nestor Carbonell has a role in the upcoming film The Dark Knight. Carbonell played the superhero Batmanuel in the short-lived live action sitcom The Tick. I can only feverishly hope that he'll once again don the glad rags of Batmanuel in the Bat-Flick next summer.

Free Market Adherents Feel the Sting of the Free Market

Poetic Justice?

Montreal Field Report #1: Zoobombcrazy

I was in Montreal last week. By mere coincidence, Pop Montreal was going on. I didn't go to very much of the happenings, because I wasn't there for that. I was there for the other kind of R & R. But when I found out the Zoobombs were playing Friday night--with the High Dials, no less!--I just couldn't stay away.

I'm in the middle of moving right now, but I wanted to take a moment to post some pictures I took of the band, and a couple of mp3's, cuz I know that's what you kids are into. The first song is the Zoobombs' signature track, "Mo' Funky", which they played as an encore at the Acadamy Club. The second is from Zoobombs frontman Don Matsuo's solo album, which looks like it came out last year. Most of the info in the CD packaging is in Japanese and thus completely unknown, but I've decided to call this song "Donuts & Coffee". I'll be back with more Mtl stuff (including some thoughts on the show itself) throughout the next week or so, but until then, enjoy the tunes.


MP3: "Mo' Funky" (live in Toronto, 2000) - Zoobombs
MP3: "Donuts & Coffee" - Don Matsuo