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

The Aristocrats!

They were gone completely for awhile, but now they're back with new outfits on. You can't exactly tell from the photo, but the father is at least wearing pants this time. I'm not sure why the kids are still bare-bottomed. Cylindrica the cat doesn't mind, as long as she gets to sit on someone's lap.

- Andrew

I Love Sundays

So, Ali got home from the photo shoot on Saturday, and she brought back a sample portrait. They were shooting kids and babies sitting at a table, and she was required to sit in for some lighting measurements:


The next day we got a dumpload of snow. We decided to venture out and get some movies so we could be entertained while the weather raged outside. It was kind of fun walking around in it, but I was glad to get back into the house, where I could warm up with a hot bath.


We got a really nice email from our friend Matt in Toronto, to which a response is forthcoming, listened to some Sunday Edition and some Sonic Youth (Washing Machine -- man, that last song is long!), and spent some quality time with the DVD player. Junebug - sentimental and surprisingly lacking in surprises, but pretty worthwhile; The Aristocrats - entertaining, for a completely juvenile documentary, but don't watch while eating dinner. Even managed to see a bit of the winter olympics. Snowboarding. Those guys are so not athletes -- just a bunch of stoners. But I enjoyed watching it. It's really weird hearing the commentators talk seriously about the boarders' "old-school stylee". REALLY weird. Almost as weird as Brian Williams repeatedly referring to the central area of the opening ceremonies as the "mosh pit".

Stupid, stupid internet!

I put this post up around four days ago wherein I asked if anyone knew the origin of a certain saying, and I was wondering why no one had responded, then I realized yesterday that it had disappeared! Weird. It was definitely there before.

The saying is, "Know thyself, and to thine own heart be true." It just suddenly popped into my head the other day and struck me as incredibly wise. I like that you get the (fairly standard) advice to be true to yourself, or rather to that part of yourself to which it's particularly important to listen, but before even doing that you're advised to first know yourself. I think that's a step that a lot of people skip without realizing it. So anyway, DOES anyone know where it's from? I'd really like to see it in the original context. My admittedly lazy googling has turned up a lot of: 1) "some guy once said.." or 2) "As Shakespeare says..." (Through which character? In which play?), and that's only putting in one of the two connected clauses at a time. The entire quote has apparently only ever been written once on the internet. It's unattributed, and the writer in fact says, "At least I think that's how it goes. Email me if I'm wrong." Type it in quotation marks if you don't believe me.

In other news: I got a raise! My bosses finally gave me the review that I was supposed to have at the end of December, and gave me a raise that is retroactive from that date. Yeah! Free money!

Alison's been working a lot lately too, doing a lot of photo assisting, which she is in fact doing right now, on top of her work for the government, or "the glub glub gang," as we like to call them. So I guess we'll be smoking big cigars and taking limos everywhere for a little while.

Thumbsucker: see it! It never came here when it was in theatres, but it's finally out on DVD so we rented it, and I really really liked it. The main actor is great at being awkward. The director is Miranda July's boyfriend. So you know it's good. Even Keanu Reeves doesn't suck in it.

The Junos: I may be on them. They're here this year, and Buck 65 will be playing, and my services may be required. Maybe I shouldn't say anything in such a public forum, but what the hell. It looks fairly certain, though I've probably just jinxed it. I'll keep you posted.

Dream: I was reading the newspaper, and I could actually see and remember what the headline said. It was, "Royal Targets Empathy: Sentences Even Samosas." Doesn't that sound like a cryptic crossword clue?

Cold weather: sucks. But I shouldn't complain, 'cause we really haven't had much. But brrrrrr!

Ali's home now. Gotta go warm up.

- Andrew

P.S. Sorry no snaps or sounds. Gotta get out more.

Weekend "Activity"

Yesterday Ali and I went to see The New World. It was pretty great, in the usual Terrence Malick style: slow-paced and meditative, hardly any plot, lots of being inside characters' heads to hear their most mystical thoughts, gorgeous majesty-of-nature shots between every scene change. Too bad it had to be Colin Farrell, but he did a reasonable job. We had to take a bus out to the big-box industrial park to see the movie and we somehow got on the wrong bus. Neither one of us really knows that end of town at all, so we didn't realize it was the wrong bus until we came back to the same mall for the third time. We had to get off and catch another bus, which we almost missed because it was confusingly called "Out of Service," and then the mob of people at the theatre nearly made us late. I'm not really sure what they were all there to see, but it certainly wasn't our movie.

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 bus home wasn't for another half hour or so, so we went into the Chapters across the lot and perused the mags. Alison found a decent photography one, and I was excited to discover Seed, my favourite magazine, which I thought had gone under since I hadn't seen an issue for about a year. It's a great science-for-people-who-have-a-working- knowledge-of-science-but-think-that-there-are-other-important-ways -of-looking-at-the-world-too publication, and this particular one has an article by Daniel Dennett, my favourite rationality-biased philosopher, who talks about the need for scientists to bring religion under the microscope. I guess it's taken from a new book of his which I will now have to track down. There's also a fascinating piece explaining how new brain cell growth has been related inversely to stress, meaning that people born into poverty and other hardships may be at an actual biological disadvantage.

So today is reading and crossword day. Next time I'll tell you about this great novel I finally allowed myself to start reading and now can't put down. Hint: it's not the Michael Crichton one about eco-terrorists that my boss loaned me.

- Andrew

Another Dream

I was at a bar having a drink with one of my bosses, who was sitting across from me. We were both in easy chairs, talking comfortably. My boss started getting more relaxed and took his shoes off. Then he started stretching his legs out while he was talking, so that one of his feet was pressing into my shin. Then he stretched out even further, until his entire foot was in my face, pressing my head back, his big toe poking into my eye. I finally had to say, "Could you at least wait until we're back in the office to do that?" Then I started laughing so hard at my own joke that I woke up.

- Andrew

Good excuse for antisocial insularity this time.

[Paranoid by Black Sabbath was here, but I'm taking all the copyrighted material off our Castpost account in the hopes that it will work again. Wish me luck. 3/27/06]

I guess I've officially joined the iPod generation. I know it's just one more way we're all keeping each other from infiltrating our mental space. But here in Halifax, we're having one of those major snowstorms today, the kind where it looks like there's a real thick fog preventing you from seeing anything, and then when you finally catch a glimpse of something it's nothing but pure white anyway. I'm the only one at work right now because everyone figured it would be OK to come in late, but I had to get something over to the newspaper first thing. When you think of me walking the deserted blocks of biblical weather in my rubber boots, listening to this on my mp3 player and feeling like some kind of really tough pioneer, you can probably imagine the smile that wouldn't disappear even if I wanted it to. Check out that guitar solo where the melody is in one ear and the distortion in the other! Wow.

Then this Cuban guy, Isaac Oviedo, came on playing quiet tres guitar and singing croakily and it was somehow even better. There's something about Cuban music that always goes great with snowy Canadian winters. And not just in some ironic, juxtaposed way, either. It's like the relaxed polyrhythms perfectly match the rhythms of the snowflakes falling or something. If I live to be 200 I'll never even pretend to understand it.

- Andrew

I have seen the future of rock 'n roll...

Wow. You gotta check out this Norwegian band, Serena Maneesh. OK, maybe I'm a little behind the times, as I guess this self-titled record that's got me all excited came out last August, but it's really hard to get over here. So hard to get, I had to track it down through not-entirely-legal means, if you know what I'm saying, but don't worry, I'm going to have my local record shoppe order it in for me. It'd be a disgrace if a band I like this much didn't squeeze a few bucks outta me for their hard work. And I've been legitimately buying a whole lot of music lately, too, so lay off me, man.

Serena Maneesh are a pretty fascinating hybrid, stylistically. They're all nebulous and breathy like My Bloody Valentine or the Jesus and Mary Chain, but also pastoral psychedelic like Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, and super wigged-out skronky like the Stooges. And they can chop it up post-punk style with the best of the contemporary kids too. However they're playing, though, it's all about the sound of the guitar for them, which is what really makes it great to listen to. You know when you can tell that a musician is just enjoying the SOUND of his or her instrument as much as you are, regardless of what notes they're actually playing, and you feel privileged to be invited along on the exploration of its possibilities? I feel that way about Thelonious Monk. Well, these guys are really really into the sound of distorted guitars. The main guy even seems like he's trying to look like Jimi Hendrix.

The whole album builds really nicely to an insane climax, so it's hard to pick just one track that'll show you what I mean, but this one seems to encompass at least some of the stuff I'm talking about. Enjoy.

- Andrew

Under the covers, behind the glass...

Ali started this post the other day (which is why the date says Friday even though it's Sunday), but the photo inserting wasn't working, so I'm finishing it for her while she works all day assisting on an Aliant photo shoot, about which I'll let her tell you. I'm pretty sure these were the two shots she was going to put up. Buster's been found completely under the covers of our bed a few times lately, though he'll never come in when we're in it. Weirdo. The mannequin family lives just up the street from us, and always gives us a pretty good chuckle when we walk by. I'm not sure why none of them wears pants.

Here's my first attempt at drawing Stephen Harper while I was watching him on TV. Something's not quite right. I'll have to keep working on it. Is it my imagination or does he wear an awful lot of turtlenecks? Maybe they just keep printing pictures from the same day.

Today and yesterday I got up at five in the morning. The first time was because I woke up from a nightmare that all of our stuff had been stolen, and today was because of something out the back window that sounded like a gunshot. But who would shoot anyone at five o'clock in the morning? Anyway, both days have been mild and sunny, and it's been really nice having so much time to get stuff done. I may even go to the gym today, which is unheard of on a Sunday. I've been stressed out and super cranky all week from bad work vibes, so a relaxed and productive weekend is just what I need.

- Andrew

Where's Ali?

Hmmm. This worked for Jason, so maybe I'll give it a try. Alison has an awesome picture which she should be putting onto the blog any time now, and maybe if you're nice she'll tell you a little bit about what's going on with her too.

- Andrew