Culchah Consumah

I've been sick in bed for a few days now. Kind of all week, actually, off and on. Sore throat with an aching, hot/cold fever. Could be strep again; I find out tomorrow. I guess that means I have plenty of time to update this blog. But frankly, it feels like I don't have much to tell you and I've just been enjoying the first season of Project Runway on YouTube so much that I haven't felt like doing anything else. But I finally saw the end of it last night.

Is it just because I'm a designer that I get so sucked into that show? Probably not: it's very popular. I guess I could go on at length about what a great show it is... but that would probably be pretty boring.

I will just say that it's so entertaining to watch a contest that's judged on actual creative imagination and ability, where good character can help a competitor deal with a stressful (albeit quite artificial) work environment, instead of hindering his chances of "putting one over" on his competition. And that Tim, the mentor, is one of the most likable people on television. And that I'm in love with Heidi Klum, even though (/because?) she terrifies me.

But actually, there is some other stuff to talk about around here. For instance, I'll be flying to Montreal in a couple of weeks to do this show with spooky indie folk songwriter Laura Borealis. She's recorded an album's worth of duets with various guys, and I did one of them with her. The show will be an exact recreation of the recording, and will also be recorded, as well as filmed. The album will then come out as a double vinyl one, with the studio recordings on the first record and the live show on the second. In other words, I'm flying up on Saturday to sing one song that night, and then flying back Sunday morning. Luckily, it's not on my own dime. I may also do some songs with Al Tuck — who will, hopefully, be there too — as an opener.

Last night I'd planned to go into Halifax after work for a jam session with The Lodge, but I was sick and there was a giant snowstorm going on, and we were only going to be able to play for an hour, so it seemed like a bad idea. But Charles and I have both been working on new material, so I'm really itching to get together and jam it out into something songlike. Meanwhile, our album will be coming out digitally next month, and physically the month after that.

Another pretty interesting thing that's happening is that I've joined a reading group to read and discuss John Ralston Saul's latest book, A Fair Country. Its thesis is that Canada would be less neurotic if it admitted to itself that its main attributes have derived from Métis, and not European, culture. My friend and old etc. Press officemate Alain has started the group because the book was exciting him so much that he needed to talk to people about it. I'd been wanting to read the book anyway, being a Saul fan of quite a few years, so I jumped at the chance. Actually, come to think of it, it was another etc. Press coworker who turned me onto JRS: Matt was reading On Equilibrium and told me a little about it and I was so intrigued that I bought it and quickly devoured it. It's still my favourite. Around that time, CBC was doing its top ten Greatest Canadians thing, and I voted for Saul as the greatest. It was a tough choice between him and Wayne Gretzky. Of course Gretzky made the list and Saul was nowhere to be seen once the tallying had been done. But so anyway, it turns out that JRS will be in Halifax in April to talk at King's College [Maybe he'll come to our little university too? You know the one...], and he's heard about our reading group and wants to somehow meet up with us! And, as Alain is working that night, I'll be one of the people to chat with the author. I hope I don't get starstruck and start talking like a teenage girl on speed, or just stare into space and drool.

I've also lately read This Is Your Brain on Music and Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl. Both are books which I had pretty much decided in advance what they would be like and by which I ended up being pleasantly surprised. I don't know how I managed to avoid reading the Anne Frank in my youth, but it's really very good. She's so level-headed, and such a good writer for a fourteen-year-old. I can't imagine a girl of that age today writing something that thoughtful and compelling. At first it felt a bit like watching a snuff film, knowing how it would end, but then I realized that all biography shares that feature. The story then becomes not about the ending but about sharing in the experience of the middle part that leads there.

A third recently finished book is David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster. It's a collection of essays, à l'A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and is of course fantastic. In particular, the review of an English usage dictionary, which becomes a long meditation on political correctness and prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar, had me nailed to my chair for hours and will be photocopied for my dad as soon as I can get it back from Johanna. But I think I've been doing too much non-fiction lately, and need to get back on the fiction horse for awhile. I'll probably start Moby Dick again because it keeps coming up and I was loving it years ago but never finished it. I should also try some more recent novels, to get me out of the "what's-the-point-in-continuing-now" slump I've been in ever since finishing Infinite Jest. I thought Martin Amis's Yellow Dog might pull me out, and it was promising at first, but its unrelenting ugliness eventually bored me into dropping it. Anyone got any suggestions?

This bed is really comfortable. I'm so glad Alison has a laptop. Being sick used to be so boring, when it meant watching soap operas or talk shows about makeovers and B-list celebrities. Instead, I can now watch stressed out designers shine in all their human glory or burn out trying, for hours on end. Or really any other manner of crazy stuff I care to look for. Here are some of the more entertaining random bits that have recently been brought to what I ironically call my attention. Enjoy, while I start in on Season 2.

- Andrew