Dang!

OK, it's gonna have to be tomorrow night. I just spent the whole evening getting photos off the digital camera and adjusting them in Photoshop.

I will tell you that we're definitely moving and that our rent and utilities are going to be more than double what we've been paying. Yoiks! But it's a way nicer place. We have it for June, but we're going to hang onto this place until July so we'll have a month over which to make the transition. One of the perks of super cheap rent.

I have to go to bed now, even though there's tons of stuff I'm itching to fill you in on. Tomorrow for sure.

- Andrew

It's been a week...

...since my last post, and there's plenty of stuff to talk about now that we're back home, but I haven't had any time yet to sit down and do it. However, a party that was supposed to happen tonight just got cancelled, so get ready for a major outpouring. Just so you're warned.

- Andrew

Shoot!

Well, we took a bunch of photos with the digital point & shoot, hoping to upload some onto the blog, but no go. For some reason, the camera won't show up as a possible location to find files on this computer. I think they have a pretty smart multiple-user interface going on that won't let you frig around with the system at all.

I can tell you that we did some more snorkelling today and took pictures this time. Alison borrowed this cool underwater automatic camera from her work. I won't know whether they turned out until we get them developed, though.

We also got some nice ones of vultures soaring around at sunset. They're all over the place here. Kind of creepy, but they also look like mini-condors, i.e. majestic and beautiful if you don't know what they are.

We met a nice couple in their early fifties named Jane and Bill, whose asses we are going to kick at ping pong tomorrow. I told Jane this place was pretty great, although it reminds me somewhat of an old people's home, and then we found out she works in an old people's home. Bill is a car salesman.

There's a really great band of five older guys who play here regularly, in the tres guitar, i.e. Isaac Oviedo style. Tonight was "Noche Cubana" in the dining room, meaning that all the food was Cuban, and the band played unamplified. It was really nice.

The crazy old piano guy is playing now as I type. He just finished "Volare" and is now into "It Had to Be You". It started out as a tempoless cascade of notes, and is now a boogie-woogie barrel roll. We'll have to give him a nice tip.

It's so weird, the huge gap between the rich white tourists and the extreme poverty that's only half a mile away from this place. We biked through it pretty extensively yesterday, getting lost along the way. I used to think the housing in Preston was kind of bad. Some of the people seem to welcome the tourists and others give you stony stares and look away when you wave and say "Hola." I would be one of those ones.

The big whoop-dee-doo piece of crap high school variety show is about to start, so I'll have to tell you more tomorrow. Stinks about the no pictures. Maybe I can find a way around it.

See ya.

- Andrew

There's a computer here!

Albeit, a pretty slow one, but still... Man are we ever having a fun time. So far we've snorkelled, biked around, played ping pong, laid on the beach, read a lot, worked on the crossword, listened to the birds singing off our balcony, eaten lots of decent and lots of weird food, checked out a crazy old piano player and a fantastic tres guitar quintet, and taken limited advantage of the free booze all the time. Tomorrow will be tennis and suntanning, with maybe another short bike ride in there. The day seems so long when you can do whatever you want. Weather's been impeccable and everyone here is friendly and helpful. I'll have to give you more interesting detail later, as we're on limited time here and dinner's almost being served and we're freakin' hungry because we didn't eat much lunch.

One thing, though. Danny, if you're reading this, could you give us Johanna's address? We wrote her a postcard but can't send it. 411canada.com doesn't seem to know her street number. You could just put a number in the comments, if you don't want anyone to be able to see her full address.

Pictures to come, maybe tomorrow. I've got a pretty good idea for one that I'm hoping will work out.

Talk to you soon.

- Andrew

Good Times Are Coming

The usual Wednesday lunchtime production meeting was postponed this week, which meant Meg and I got to treat ourselves to the Wednesday chirashi lunch special at Dharma Sushi. Yum — chirashi. If you don't know what it is, as I didn't until I ate it the first time, it's a big bowl of seasoned sticky rice with lots of different kinds of sashimi (the slabs of raw fish with nothing else) sitting on top, along with some ginger and wasabi. It's a pretty nice treat, let me tell you.

Ali and I did some more tanning after work and we're actually getting some colour! I fell asleep in the tanning bed and dreamed I was in a spaceship. When the timer ran out and the lights went off, I woke up with a start and didn't know at first why I was in a highly constrictive pod in my underwear. Yikes!

By the way, here's a sample of that Congotronics 2 stuff I was telling you about. It's a pretty intensely happy sound.



I remembered something else I was going to warn you about. Don't go to see The Benchwarmers. It really stinks. Pee-yew. I laughed at it somewhat, but I really was laughing AT it, if you know what I mean. Serious stinkbomb. Smell-o-rama. An olfactory assault. Gas masks required. The only good reason for seeing it is if you're having flatulence problems and don't want to be discovered.

Neither would I recommend Caché, a postmodern cerebral French film in which I fell asleep. As the title suggests there are hidden layers to the film, and you're pretty much forced as a viewer to look for them because there's really nothing going on on the surface. Unfortunately when you discover the not very sub subtext it's every bit as boring as the rest of the film. I was woken up momentarily by one incredibly violent scene out of nowhere, but soon drifted off again as the camera lingered motionless on its aftermath for an eternity. This is a motif that repeats throughout the movie, if absolute silence can be called a motif. Oh yeah, did I mention it's a thriller?

Two more days until Cuba; I still can't believe it. I can picture myself lying on the beach only in a third person, visual way. I can't imagine what it will feel like to be that person. I started loading up the mp3 player tonight, but something weird happened where it thinks its full even though there's still plenty of memory left. Too bad — I had the ultimate mix of classic good time tunes and obscure gems planned.

Last night's yoga class was the most intense we've ever had, and I'm kind of still recovering from it, so I'm off to rest my elongated muscles now. Probably won't blog again before we leave, so love and kisses to everyone, we'll take lots of pictures, and who knows, maybe there'll even be internet access in a hotel lobby somewhere...

Buenos noches.

- Andrew

This blogging business is hard work.

Let me say first off that I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update this thing. In Neil Postman's words, we've been amusing ourselves to death somewhat. The final season of Six Feet Under is well worth the price of admission, for anyone interested in such things. Keep a healthy supply of eco-friendly tissues on hand, though. Infinite Jest is so far hilariously entertaining, if/because extremely wordy. And the latest album about which I have to insist "Buy! Buy! Buy!" is Congotronics 2, a compilation of contemporary bands from the outskirts of Kinshasa, Congo who are similar only in that they all play amplified thumb pianos, among other kooky and not-so-kooky instruments, through homemade sound systems that produce a crazy distortion to whose rhythm it is impossible not to dance. Maybe I'll put up a sample next time.

I guess I've also been kind of avoiding the home computer because there's been some work I didn't want to do and felt like if I sat down with Mr. MacIntosh I would have to get it done before I could do anything else. But I finally finished it off today at work, so now I can do whatever the heck I like. The project was writing explicit instructions for Meg, my friend and coworker, on how to produce the used car newspaper insert I work on for two days every two weeks. It was sort of an excruciating, drawn-out effort that made me realize I was crazy if I ever thought I wanted to pursue technical writing as a career. However, it's done now, which means Meg will be able to do the work next week, which means I can GO TO CUBA!!!

That's right — we've booked a trip to Holguin, where we stay at an all-inclusive resort for a week, and we leave this Friday. I can't really believe we're going and probably won't until the plane has landed. We've never really taken a "real" vacation together, so it's super duper exciting. There's a lot to do before we leave, though. This evening, for instance, we had to lie in tanning beds for eight minutes so we won't get a Canadian-style burn on our first day there and spend the rest of the week in agony. We also wanted to get our taxes done and sent off before leaving, but as I haven't done mine for 10 years now (shhhhh), I tried to take them to H&R Block, who said they would charge me about $700 to do them for me, so it looks like I'll be taking them with me for some rainy day fun. I'm not sure whether it was H or R I was talking to, but she also told me impatiently that I wouldn't be able to stay there and watch her while she did them. I don't really understand why she thought I would have any desire to do that. Wouldn't I just do them myself if having them done professionally involved my observation? Anyway, that's what is happening now, so I suppose it's a null point.

Let's see... what else?

Tim was down for a visit last week and we got to see him a few times, including at a softball practice, in the smokiest bar that has ever existed in a not-purely-for-torture capacity, and at various unanticipated times and locations around the city, which last was probably the nicest as it made us feel like he still lives here.

Speaking of softball, did I mention before that I'm going to coach some little kids on softball technique with a friend of mine this summer? Maybe I did; I can't remember and am too tired to check. But I'm really looking forward to it, anyway.

Continuing to speak of softball, Meg has agreed to try playing on our team this year, which is great news because a) she is awesome and b) we need another girl or two. Weekly practices will begin this coming Sunday, but of course I won't be here. I wonder if I should bring my glove to Cuba? Baseball's pretty big there, I gather.

I helped my friend Charles work on his new recording studio yesterday. It was the first time I'd been down there, and it's coming along really nicely. Looks like it's going to be a great spot — much bigger than the Mullet was and it's actually being built according to a design. I can't wait to see — and hear — it up and running.

We're probably going to be moving into that new place on Maynard at the beginning of June, so we're starting to look at getting rid of stuff. If we could reduce the quantity of our belongings by about half, I'd be happy. Anyone have any use for some moth-eaten sweaters and a box of used ice cream buckets? Danny, I'm looking at you.

I found some yoga poses designed specifically for my twisted old spine, and they seem to make my back feel pretty good. I recently had x-rays done and found that my scoliosis is even weirder than I'd thought, as my spine not only bends one way and then back the other, but it also twists around its own axis all the way down. Basically, it looks like a modern roller coaster. But so maybe these poses, and possibly a trip to a chiropractor, will help me not to be a hunchback by age 50.

There's probably still more things I have to tell you, but if so they'll just have to wait until next time. Whew.

- Andrew

This Just In: Not Much Going On

I can't believe how little has happened in the past seven days. It seems like staying up late last Sunday after the you-know-what-o's and having a couple of beers pretty much threw me out of whack for the entire week. I was often cranky and stressed out at work, and never felt like doing much besides watching Season Four of Six Feet Under when I got home. There was no yoga class on Tuesday, so that might have had something to do with it. What if it turns out that yoga is actually bad for you, and only seems healthy because after awhile you start feeling sub-par if you don't do it, as with any addiction? Maybe in twenty years we'll see yoga instructors vilified in court just as harshly as the tobacco industry recently has been.

The SFU, by the way, is a season we already saw, but the fifth and final season recently came out and we wanted to be completely clued in before watching it. Season Four really held up to our intense and hungry scrutiny; the writing on that show is so terrific, as is the entire cast. We took the box set out for an extra week, but didn't end up needing it, and now we've begun watching Season Five.

Lest you think our time has been entirely unproductive, here's a couple of photos from a roll of film Alison finally finished off and got developed. The first is the parking lot outside the movie theatre from when we went to see The New World back in February. I think I told you about that. Oh yes, here it is: "When we got out of the film 2.5 hours later, the sun had just gone down and this really weird fog had settled everywhere. The giant yellow sulfur parking lot lights above it were creating purple haze without the drugs or feedback, and the sky was a brilliant indigo with a bright half moon right in the centre. It was really beautiful and Ali got a picture of it, but unfortunately it's analog on a roll of 36, so it won't be available for some time."

The second photo is a pair of shoes Ali spotted in a store window and had to document so that I would believe her. It's called "Let Me Check".

Also, I wrote a poem. It's sort of an ode, inspired by my dinner one night:
The mushroom is
A delicious fungus.
If you only eat one,
It should be humongous.

Krista suggested I do a whole series of them which could be made into a children's book. I think it's a fabulous idea. I would call it A Child's Garden of Vegetables, illustrations by Alison Beckett. Anyone have any suggestions for material?

We did some laundry today and went to the nearby bookstore while waiting for the dryers to finish, what with the hippy café being kaput and all. I picked up John Ralston Saul's On Equilibrium so I'll have it available for lending when anyone shows any interest in it, and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I've been meaning to read the latter for a long time and by the sheer physical weight of it I think that's exactly what I will be doing. Seems like it's going to be pretty entertaining, though. Then there was an impromptu pre-season softball practice after laundry, and everyone was looking real good. It felt great to get some exercise outdoors, even though it was sort of cold and quite grey.

Oh of course, how could I forget? I also went to see a band from Montreal called Torngat play at Gus' Pub on Friday night. It was a really late night in a really smoky bar, for which I'm still paying today, but completely worth it. They're three multi-instrumentalists who make a huge experimental post-rock sound with drums, french horn, various keyboards and effect pedals, trumpet, and even sometimes a xylophone. Pretty exciting stuff and all for just five bucks, which included two other bands as well. My friends Meg and Tomomi were there too and we all super loved it.

But tonight it's early to bed for me, so au revoir for now.

- Andrew

I swear this is the last I'll have to say about the freakin' Junos.

So, as some astute observers noticed, Rich's in-ear monitors were not working at the beginning of the show last night. No one knows why, but I suspect sabotage. Because he was wearing specially made ones that were molded to the contours of his ears, the lack of any signal meant he actually couldn't hear a single thing. Once he popped them out, he could hear the sound coming through the speakers, but that was significantly delayed -- hence his behind-the-beat delivery. I also noticed on carefully analysing the videotape of the show that I got fairly gypped in the mix. Kind of a bummer to offer such a mediocre performance after so much preparation, but at least he got all the words in and didn't end up doing a little elf dance à la Ashley Simpson.

After that little ordeal was over, Rich's equipment was working fine again, and we had a great time watching a lot of the show from the floor. Coldplay were really great, and it was very surreal to be in the same room with Chris Martin, Pamela Anderson, and Bryan Adams all at the same time. Broken Social Scene came off a lot better live than they sounded on TV.

Our friend Krista was with us checking out the special appearances and hanging out backstage. Coldplay took off as soon as they were done, so we took over their dressing room, which had a television for watching the show. There had been some beers in our dressing room at one point, which had later gone missing, and we discovered them there, though I'm not pointing any fingers. There was also some delicious food which the sensitively anthemic Brits had very kindly neglected to eat.

Besides the performance going slightly awry, the other bummers of the evening were that I couldn't find the media centre until the ET people were gone and so didn't get to meet Cheryl Hickey; that I wasn't given one of the prestigious swag bags worth $5,000 that most of the nominees and performers got; and that Alison didn't think to bring her camera out onto the floor — she's pulling the last two hairs out of her scalp as I write this. Highlights were the Coldplay/Kraftwerk song; finally meeting Rich's fiancée, Claire, and his family; hearing Pamela Anderson get booed; hearing Jann Arden's retort get cheered; peeing in Coldplay's toilet; and getting to hang out with an awesome bunch of friends. Here are some backstage photos:

Don't ask me what the heck was going on here. That's Claire in the background.

Here's me; Rich's manager, Piers; Rich; Rich's other manager, Nick; and Charles in the dressing room.

Ali and Krista freaking out in front of "Dplay's" dressing room.

No beer tastes better than the beer that Coldplay steals from you and then you steal back once they're safely out of the building.

- Andrew

Best Minute and Forty-Four Seconds Ever

That's what you're going to see tomorrow night at 7:00 EDT. Well, maybe not REALLY, but I've gotta pump myself up a little. I am quite excited about it and it should go off without a hitch. We've practiced it many many times now, out of and then in the Metro Centre where the awards show is happening. Yesterday morning was three and a half hours of rehearsing the performance over and over again, with about fifteen minutes of staring into space in between each time, while the technical people sorted out camera angles and sound and technical type things. Ben Mulroney and his female e-Talk Daily counterpart, whatever her name is, were spotted sniffing around and filming some little incidental segments. He has a very large head.

I thought I'd probably be meeting Pamela Anderson somewhere in there, but now realize that the closest I'll come to her will be when the actual show happens and she steps onto a stage about 50 feet from ours as we finish our bit. Not that I was especially keen to meet her or anything, but I did have myself kind of psyched up to be as normal as possible and follow Alison's advice of "look her in the eye". But they really have the whole shenanigan planned out so that the high-level and low-level celebrities are kept well away from each other in both time and space. However, Coldplay's dressing room is right across from ours, next to the garbage storage area. I don't know what that means.

One "celebrity" I will get to meet is Cheryl Hickey. A woman who used to live in the apartment above us in Halifax, and now lives in Toronto, showed up at the bar where we were with some friends last night, and turns out to be working for Entertainment Tonight Canada. I told her, truthfully, that I think the show is a lot more interesting than its American counterpart, and revealed my embarassing but not insignificant crush on Ms. Hickey, the main host. Yeah, yeah, I know. So she says, "Well, you should come by the media area at the show. We'll be there, and you can meet her." Yikes! Hilarious, weird, and awesome.

This whole town has gone Juno crazy and there've been all sorts of shows and parties, most of which Ali and I have successfully avoided. The one last night at the bar I mentioned was The Self-Conscious, Mike O'Neill's new band. I think I've already raved about them on here, but no harm in saying it was really really enjoyable. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. The place was a madhouse of squashed together bodies, many from out of town. Normally, that would be a definite minus, but I kept running into people I know and everyone was so keyed up and full of good will that the mood was pretty infectious.

The evening before that was a free outdoor concert in the Grand Parade (Toronto translation: = Nathan Phillips Square), starring Joel Plaskett and Matt Mays. We couldn't wait for the Mays set, but Joel had the enormous crowd (4,000?) in the palm of his hand as he belted it out and pontificated Springsteen-style about the meaning of a hometown. Shameless Hali-pride pandering abounded. Hundreds of little kids were lifted onto as many pairs of shoulders. Many balloons were lost forever to the clear twilit sky. It was great.

And tomorrow night promises to be no less of a spectacle. Unfortunately, Rich's entourage seems to somehow be short a couple of tickets for the show, which means that both Charles and I have to give up our seats in order for our significant others to be able to attend. So you may catch glimpses of us after our opening bit, milling around down in the general admission section in front of the performance stages. I'll be the one punching the air to the Black Eyed Peas.

This whole thing has sure been a good time, and I'm pretty excited about tomorrow night. Playing with Rich again and getting to spend some time with him and Charles has been really nice -- I wish we could do some more of it. And I'm getting paid very handsomely too, even after you subtract the musicians' union's penalty for not being a member. Man, I hate that union. See you on the red carpet, maybe, I'm not sure, probably not.

- Andrew

Loose Ends

Finally, here is the Joni Mitchell song I was raving about a few posts ago. I had to create a new Castpost account to get it to work.

I forgot to mention yesterday that it seems Neuseiland will be playing a show soon. Tim's coming down from Toronto for a visit, and there's been talk about an April 13 gig, though I don't believe anyone has actually set anything up yet. Hmm, someone should probably do that... Well, we'll see what happens. Looking forward to seeing Tim, at least.


I feel today like I'm coming down with a cold. I bought some Cold-FX, so I should be OK, but say a prayer to the pagan god of your choice for me. If I come down with this flu that seems to have knocked out my entire family, and then have to play the Junos, there's gonna be hell to pay for the Ontario contingent. OK, chances are slim that I would actually have contracted the virus via some indirect and circuitous route traceable to one of them, but you never know.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that we went to Mitchell Wiebe's art opening at The Speakeasy on Saturday night. He had all sorts of great new material up, which I wish we could afford to purchase some of. We had just been saying the other day that we hadn't seen any of his recent paintings in a long time, so it was nice to see what he's up to. I guess you could say it's a continuation in the same vein he's been working for years, but you'd be using a pretty broad definition of the word "vein" in that case. He's always full of surprises, both funny and fear-inspiring.

- Andrew

We've been busy little bees.

Holy cow, it's been over a week since my last real post. I realized it because we did laundry again today and made some really nice sock balls. The excellent and inexpensive, hippy-run, mostly vegan restaurant above and beside the laundromat has closed down because I guess they didn't pay the rent. Sigh. Stupid, disorganized hippies. I asked the laundry guy about it and he said the building owners will be reopening it in about two weeks with all new staff, because those people were "a bunch of gypsies." When I laughed nervously at that, he said they were seriously disgusting pigs. I guess we can say goodbye to the refritos and Grateful Dead every Sunday morning.

Coincidentally, there was also a Joni Mitchell special from a few years ago on TV tonight. It was really good. Sorry I never could get that song from a couple of posts back working. None of our Castpost files were working, so I removed some, and now the YouTube video from that post doesn't work either! The internet's all screwed up, man.

I guess quite a lot has been going on since last we one-way communicated. Alison's whole photography gear deal got changed again, with the guy deciding he does want to hang onto most of his equipment except for one digital camera, so Cuba is now back on. I've taken the week of April 24th off. Also, the same guy has decided to sell his laptop, so Ali will be purchasing a pretty new G4 12" iMac! Very exciting. I'll have this beautiful G3 tower all to myself, muah ah aaaaahhh.

Rehearsals for the Junos have gotten underway, and it's sounding pretty sweet. I'm going to go in on my lunch hour every day this week to keep running through it with Charles and Rich until it's like Happy Birthday to us. It'll be the most practiced minute-and-a-half piece of music ever. Dress rehearsal is Friday. Incidentally, it was Charles's birthday yesterday and we went over for some cake and socializin'. His daughter Ava carried the cake in to him while we all sang the HB song as slowly as humanly possible. It was some cute, I tell ya.

We looked at an apartment today that's right under that of our friends Krista and Keith. It's gorgeous, and we're definitely going to take it unless the landlady decides to jack up the rent, even though it's currently more than twice as much as what we're paying here. We can afford it, and it has a nice back yard with gardens, a sunroom, a gas stove, and washer and dryer. Plus, there's plenty of storage space and it's right under the K's. A short hop from the Common too, for convenient access to softball games in the summer.

Oh yeah, that's another thing. I don't think I already told you this. My friend and softball teammate, Jen, ran into Alison on the street awhile ago, and described this dream she'd recently had wherein she was the coach of a little league softball team. She said she woke up so happy that she realized it was something she really wanted to do. But the thought of coaching a team all by herself was a little daunting, so she immediately thought of getting me to do it with her. When Ali told me about it, I thought it was one of the best ideas I'd heard in a long time, and couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to me before. So now Jen has put the call in to some guy who's in charge of such things, and we're just waiting to hear what can be done. One possible problem is that neither of us has a car. But we do both live really near the Common, so if all the games took place there... I really hope it happens; I'm quite psyched about the possibility.

Anything else? Hmm, I think that's about it. What more do you want out of a week? I spent about four days synthesizing the sound I needed on my keyboard for this Juno performance. There was a lot of random feeling around in the dark, not knowing whether I was getting closer or farther from the guide track Graeme had laid down, and it really had me pulling my hair out until I realized that the key was to make it sound like a rubber band being plucked. After that, I narrowed in on it pretty quickly and got it honed exactly how I wanted it. I'm glad I did, too. It's a very versatile sound, based on one of Kraftwerk's key signature timbres.

Working on it gave me a whole new respect for those guys. They really knew what they were doing -- you'd never just stumble upon this sound, because if you change it a little bit in almost any direction, it becomes completely wrong. Actually, I noticed that you can hear that sound slowly evolve with each consecutive album, starting with Autobahn. They don't quite have it yet on that one -- it still sounds a little cartoony -- but by Trans Europe Express it's very solid and they make significant use of it. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but I believe Autobahn is also the last album on which they used flute, converting themselves into a purely electronic band. It's as if they said, "Screw the flute, we've got rubber bands now."

I also had this flash of realization/memory that when I was very young I used to enjoy hooking elastic bands around bureau handles and other things to make "guitars". I could listen to and experiment with that sound all day long. Maybe that early musical experience unconsciously influenced my adolescent love of Kraftwerk! I'm now planning a recording involving actual rubber bands. My dream is to put together a full rubber band band. Maybe the drummer could play balloons.

So, in conclusion: no more hippies or expensive camera gear; Junos, laptop, Cuba, little league, and moving are all a go; Joni Mitchell and rubber bands rule. Have a nice week.

- Andrew

Yeah, this is REALLY boring! Who made it up?

Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to it).
3. Find the 5th sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

Boring, boring result:
And not only not want to do it, but regularly act in an unhealthy way, based on my not wanting?

More Morbid Reminiscence

I'm obsessed lately with this Joni Mitchell song from the 70's. About a week ago, I started waking up with it in my head every day, and it's a pretty freaking complicated tune, so you can't just go around humming or whistling it when that happens. Believe me, I tried. I've heard it said that when you have a tune stuck in your head you should put it on and listen to it all the way through, because it's just your brain trying to work out how the whole thing goes and once it's heard the actual song it'll lay off. Well, so I did that and it actually brought me to tears. I don't think I've ever heard such a succint, rich, universal expression of the sadness and hope that is the human condition: It's a lonely life and, what's worse, you have no one to blame but yourself. But you are also the only one with the ability to turn it around. Very buddhist, actually.

Anyway, that didn't work at all and now it's almost always in my head. I remember going through about a year of this with the album Heijira back in the early 90's. Hopefully this one will be a little more short-lived. Yesterday morning I forced Ali to sit down and listen to it, and immediately burst into tears again. Enjoy:

[Well, I can't get this stinkin' thing working. Something's gone terribly wrong with Castpost. It was Down to You, off Court and Spark. You should go listen to it. Everyone has that album, right?]

And, in case the short glimmer of blue skies at the end was not enough upliftingness for you, here's a really nice piece of nostalgia I discovered on a pretty great site called YouTube. The ending's different from what I remember, but Ali tells me there were a few different ones. Just as well -- that handful of powder stands out as one my sadder childhood memories. Love those sweeping shots from within the contraption.


- Andrew

Laundering Money

Of course there's lots of craaayzee shenanigans going on as always, but I only want to quickly mention a couple of things:

1. We did our laundry tonight, as we do about once a week, and I think I noticed something very interesting, which no one ever talks about. I believe it is a general fact of human nature that everyone likes packing up the socks. The rest of the folding is a huge pain in the ass, but I'll do it willingly because I know when I get through it I'll be let at that pile of socks just waiting to be paired up and made into tidy little balls. Why is that such a gratifying activity? My theory is that it makes us feel incredibly intelligent to know we can successfully find the right match for each one, like kids playing the memory game, and then earn the reward of creating an entirely new thing out of the two matches. And I think this is a universal truth. Please correct me if I'm mistaken, though.

Speaking of hosiery, we were wondering on the weekend, due to a misleading crossword clue, whether "hose," as in stockings, is singular or plural. You can't say, "I am wearing a hose," right?

2. It's looking like we're probably not going to take that Cuba vacation after all. Alison's been trying to get a bank loan to buy all this photographic equipment at a good rate from a guy she knows well, but they won't go for it because she has no credit history. No history is good history, I say, but they don't see it that way. So I guess we'll have to use our savings to cover it. Which is a very worthy thing to be spending our savings on; it just means we won't have enough for a big whoop-dee-doo trip after all. We'll probably figure out some kind of cottage rental or something instead, and save the whoop-dee-doo for later.

I don't think that was actually the second thing I was going to mention, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. I am very tired and definitely shouldn't stay up to watch The Office, but that's exactly what I'm going to do because I don't see enough of people acting like insensitive boobs to comic effect during the day.

- Andrew

Performance

Hey, folks. Don't feel much like blogging this evening. Just finished doing a bunch of freelance and brought-home design work, and now I'm trying to get to bed. But here's an illustrated depiction of my solo show on Thursday night.






It was very low-key and quiet. Pretty intense, actually. I've kind of figured out that I don't really like playing solo and that the only people I would just as soon see play solo as with a band are Billy Bragg, Joni Mitchell, and Thelonious Monk. I'll probably think of others later. But anyway, I might want to try it one more time with an mp3-player loaded with backing tracks, to see if that's any more fun. Lest you think it didn't go over well, though, it did. All twelve audience members had a real nice time.

We went to see the Super Friendz last night, which was fantastic, as one would expect, and Mike O'Neill opened for them with his new band, i.e. drummer, which was also fantastic and a rare treat as he hasn't performed live in some time. Good to see him in top form and enjoying himself. The show was at the Grawood, which is a really weird student bar at Dalhousie. Loud, dark, and kind of unpleasant. Cheap beers, though.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend. We had incredibly warm weather for this time of year, and spent a lot of time walking around in it. Now I'm tired and must rest my corporeal form. Have a nice night!

- Andrew

What Have I Done?

Yesterday, at the coffee shop I visit at least once a day, the guy behind the counter told me he has a solo acoustic show coming up there on Thursday and asked me if I could do an opening set for him. He knows I play music, y'see, although I think that's pretty much the extent of his knowledge about the subject, so it was pretty nice of him to just invite me sound unheard. So I said (gulp) yes! Now I have to come up with enough songs I know how to play and figure out how to play them in a solo vein. I'm actually kind of excited about it; gonna throw some oldies into the mix. And it'll be good practice embarassing myself in front of people for the upcoming Junos.

On the weekend, Ali and I got to catch up with a bunch of people we haven't seen in a long time due to winter hibernation. There was a party on Friday night which was pretty mellow and really nice, and then on Sunday we went for a walk in the park with Charles and Kelly, their two little girls, Lee Anne, and her dog. I feel like I never spend any time with Charles anymore, but I guess we'll be hanging out a fair amount in preparation for the aforementioned J-awards. Alison brought her new digital camera along but couldn't get it working. However, we figured it out back at home and did a quick experimental series. Enjoy.

One more thing: if you ever feel like laughing uncontrollably, ask Alison to do her rendition of this year's Oscar winner for best song, It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp. I swear it's even funnier than the original.

- Andrew

Ketchup

Hey. Long time no blog. How's it going? Here too.

I guess we've been pretty busy, as usual. Mostly it's been the fun kind of busy, though. Last weekend we went bowling with Meg and her sister, Litsko. It was really a blast. I had been bragging about what a great bowler I am and the first four balls I bowled all went in the gutter. I gradually worked my way back up to my own standards, though. The beer may have helped. We had to wait a long time to get a lane, so there was a bit of an intersibling air hockey tournament. And I don't know why we're squishing poor Meg's head in the last photo here. She didn't even win.





We also went to a dance party the same night, in the space that is soon to become the store of our friends Sherry and Jay. That was a lot of fun, at least until Joe the de facto DJ blew out one of the speakers and started playing the same terrible tracks over and over again and wouldn't let anyone else on the stereo. We left pretty soon after that, but I guess people were there until around 5:30 or 6. Sheesh!

This week at work has been super hectic, but at least Meg's back. However, someone was also fired so it's pretty much as busy as when she was on vacation. These random firings seem to always happen right after we've hired someone new, and for some reason always just as Meg gets back from vacation. Weird, spooky, and very very sad.

Speaking of vacation, Ali and I are trying to plan one for around the end of April. We want to go to some kind of all-inclusive resort in a warm place for a week, figuring it'll be cheaper at that time of year. Anyone got any suggestions of where to go? (Please don't say Mexico.) I'm thinking Cuba would be pretty cool...

I am, by the way, definitely going to be playing with Rich at the Junos. So everybody set your VCR's to record on Sunday, April 2nd at 8:00 pm Atlantic Time (7:00 Eastern). Don't forget to put a tape in! Or that the VCR has to be turned off. That's the one that always gets me. Also, I think that's the day we start Daylight Savings, so don't even ask me to figure that out.

I've hardly had any time for reading lately, but when I have it's been spent on The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon. You may remember that I was saving that one like a compulsive weirdo until I'd finished some other, less immediately gratifying works, but I finally gave in about a month ago. It's incredibly rich and funny and emotionally compelling and just a really really great read. Two adolescent cousins in the thirties, one a recent American immigrant from Czechoslovakia, and the other a fatherless latent homosexual, invent a superhero called The Escapist, modelled on Houdini, and start a comic book early in the history of the form. Meanwhile, the Second World War looms. That's the plot, anyway, but the reason to read the book is the writing, which is warm and generous, witty and unassuming. In summary, me like.

That's 'er fer now. Going to scarf down some pizza and watch an episode of The Larry Sanders Show before working on some freelance design. Take care, cheerio, etc.

- Andrew

I have seen the future of intimate suppertime jazz...

I finally got to the end of that lengthy bit of Halipunk nostalgia. Whew! Of course, it keeps getting added to every day, so if I don't stay on top of it I'll quickly be behind again. But I think it's kind of jumped the shark at this point anyway. How many more stories can I read that go "Remember at that party at A's house when B did way too much C and broke his or her D trying to smash E? I wonder if he or she is still alive."? I will be listening to Steve and Lee Anne's memorial radio show, though.

Tonight Ali and I went out after work with our friend Meg and her sister Litsuko, who's visiting from Detroit. They wanted to hear some jazz so after eating we headed over to the SoHo Kitchen to check out the Chalmers Doane Trio (a quartet, oddly enough). I wasn't exactly looking forward to it, as I'm pretty picky when it comes to jazz, and after two Sunday Editions in a row where Michael Enright debated whether jazz stinks I'd kind of come to the conclusion that although there is some jazz I love, I definitely sympathise more with those on the stinking side of the argument. In fact, even typing the word "jazz" that many times is kind of making me nauseous. But so anyway, it ended up being a really nice time. The guys (and gal) playing were pretty old and obviously just in it for a good time. It was very lightweight, which could mean terrible, but it managed to find a small, enjoyable position for itself in a little known territory between unobtrusive background music and uninspired improv. Meaning that it didn't force itself on you, but if you chose to pay attention, there was something pleasant waiting to reward you. Maybe it was the ukulele; I don't know. They were just having such obvious fun, without being overly ostentatious about it. We happened to meet up with a friend of Meg's and Alison's from the community college and her amusingly ditzy British chum, all sat at one table, and had a real nice time. And when the band was through, Chalmers came over to our table and thanked us for coming out, which I thought was pretty classy.

- Andrew

How I Misspent My Adulthood Remembering How I Misspent My Youth

So, I was pretty much the entire weekend poring over this tome. It's a really really long thread on the Halifax Locals message board in which pretty much everyone who ever went to Backstreet Amusements video arcade in the late '80s reminisces about, well, pretty much whatever. Thanks a lot, Sandra. Highly entertaining, even though I don't even know who most of the people on it are. I was around just enough during that time and have met enough locals since then to make a complete reading absolutely necessary to quench my historical curiosity. Plus, new people keep showing up along the way, who then have to go through the oh-my-god-can-you-believe-this-thing-it's-so-great- remember-when routine. And then everyone else is happily surprised to hear from them. It's quite fascinating and heartwarming, actually. So really thanks a lot, Sandra, without the sarcasm this time. Now I just have to get through the last 25 pages.

Note to Dana: Someone mentions at one point Callah and Natalie, who were always together. Must be the same ones, right?

Note to Johanna: There's a very nice, not at all embarassing photo of you at some party on page 87.

In other news, we got a visit from our friend Matt today. He came down from Toronto for a very short vacation with Laura and to try and get some kind of intership somewhere in Halifax for the summer. So we got to have lunch with him at the Shoe Shop, which was really nice but way too short. It was great to catch up with him. Seems like J-school's treating him well and he's enjoying the big city. Too bad our waiter was sort of an inept bozo. After lunch I took him up to my office to show him around. Matt, not the inept waiter.

The weather was certainly colder over the weekend than it's been. On Sunday the wind was whipping so hard around our poor little rowhouse that we were sure it was going to smash in a back window and blow us right out the front. Neither one of us was feeling very well, but we finally agreed that it was about time to take the screen out of our bedroom window and put up the plastic that allows the room temperature to approach the thermometer setting. Once that had been done, we felt fully justified in getting back into bed and spending the rest of the morning with "The Sunday Edition". That Michael Enright was cracking me up. He has definitely grown on me. For a long time I thought he was a total boob, but now I realize that he just plays the fool in a really dry way for entertainment's sake, and to draw thoughtful, coherent responses out of his guests. Though sometimes I'm still not convinced he's putting it on. But at least it doesn't drive me crazy anymore. I like how he ends every episode by saying, "I'm Michael Enright?..."

Gotta hit the hay now. Well, after I read a couple more pages of the Backstreet Boys' (and Girls') Proustian recollections: A la recherche des quarts perdus — Book I: Clarke's Way.

- Andrew

I got a real red wagon!

Last night for belated Valentine's Day we watched A Mighty Wind (again) and busted a gut over delicious Chinese food and a couple of beers. Fred Willard is the funniest unfunny guy ever!

- Andrew