March 5th, 2013

How to Enjoy a Concert…in Your Thirties…

I came across these tips on how to have an awesome time at a concert on Alan Cross’s blog. It’s good, but extremely sparse to me, and probably to most people who don’t regularly attend concerts. Tips like “bring a friend or go alone” and “when to drink and where” might make some uncool people like myself think that this is a code keep the uncool out.

It’s not true! Just like how on the internet no one knows you’re a dog, in the dark no one knows you’re a dork: if you feel like going to hear live music, you should go. I went to a show last week with a kleenex in the sleeve of my cardigan, so if I can do it, anyone can.

If you’re like me, you probably used to go see bands semi-regularly in high school and university, whenever someone told you about a cool show and you could afford it. But then, after graduation, you (I) knew fewer people who went to stuff, and moved to a city where I didn’t know the venues, and gradually got really intimidated and started picturing every show I considered attending as a cross between a mosh pit and a grade 8 dance.

About 4 years ago, my brother and I realized that while we both finally had money to spend on each other, we could never think of anything we wanted for holiday or birthday gifts. We also realized we have similar taste in music and both regretted not taking part in Toronto’s vibrant musical offerings. So we buy each other show tickets for every gift now, and we attend together. It’s really fun, and not nearly as intimidating as I thought. So, after a few dozen shows, here’s some tips if you’re old-ish and looking get back to concert scene:

1) Listen to music. A friend said to me once, “It’s so sad how terrible music is these days. All I ever listen to is my old albums.” I barely stopped myself from screeching, “That is how you die!!” Music is not depreciating, it’s changing! It’s harder to find things you like when you don’t have whole evenings to spend listening to music and none of your friends suggest things to listen to. But try. Listen to the radio and google anything you hear that you like. Try one of those internet radio stations that takes a performer you like and suggests more. Ask your friends what they’re listening to. Most people in their thirties didn’t stop listening to music, they just stopped forming their identies around it. And it’s totally fine to stick to some bands you used to like in the 90s–they were great–but for goodness’s sakes, listen to their current albums. Bands evolve, and you don’t want to be disappointed at the show because it turns out you don’t like anything they’ve written in the past 15 years.

2) Pay the money. One thing I don’t do in my rock-and-roll renaissance is see random bands. I don’t just go sit in a bar and see who comes on, or go to free community shows, or anything where I don’t have at least a hopeful suspicion that I will like the band. If I’m that hopeful, I am also willing to pay whatever a ticket costs. Not usually that much–I don’t have Rolling Stones tastes–but I pay whatever it takes. I wish I could be out discovering the stuff that no one knows about yet, but really, to stay out late on a weeknight, I have to sorta know I’ll be happy.

3) Plot the logistics. In case you’re a real newbie at concerts, or have only been to those outdoor summer festivals, here’s the biggest logistical issue with concert attendance as a grown-up: you don’t get to sit down. There are no chairs in most venues, and in the few that some stools or whatnot, like Lee’s Palace, people hunch on them grimly as soon as the doors open. It’s not worth it–wear comfortable shoes and a bag you can hang on your shoulder, and come well-rested–you’ll still be tired at the end of the night, but it’s manageable.

Other logistical issues: There are coatchecks in most concert venues, but then you’re stuck in a giant line at the end of the night when you want to go home. I favour the “roll your coat into a ball and stick it between your feet” approach, but it’s up to you. Also, figure out how you’re getting to and fro, especially if it’s Sound Academy, which annoying to walk, transit, AND drive to. Basically, unless you have a jetpack or are willing to live there, only go to Sound Academy shows you *really* want to see. Lee’s Palace and the Phoenix are on the subway line and are awesome; the Opera House and the Mod Club aren’t, but at least have some reasonable transit options. I have no idea how to park anywhere, but if you’re going to try driving, best to look into it–might be challenging.

4) Embrace the experience. I sometimes skip the openers in favour of eating and sitting down for a little longer, but I’ve discovered some good music when I see the full show. Go to the merch table, buy a drink, crowd watch. Music is growing increasingly atomized–we listen alone, on our computers and ipods, and have little idea who our fellow fans are. It’s an amazing experience to assume this tiny bit of solidarity–I like a thing you like–with strangers. In the absence of knowledge, I assume everyone who likes a band I like is just like me. Imagine my surprise to discover teenagers in arm-warmers and eyelines at the Bright Eyes show and drunk university students at Hey Rosetta. My favourite crowd ever was at a The Wooden Sky. I think of them as a gentle roots-rock band, but the early twentysomethings at the show seemed ready for a kegger for some reason. Many were drunk upon arrival, including two beautiful young women who were so surprised to meet up in the lobby, they embraced so hard they fell down. A girl standing in front of me in the bathroom lineup asked me to tell her “honestly” if she had puke on the back of her shirt, and I sadly had to tell her that she did. Later in that same lineup, the girl behind me was having so much trouble waiting that I peeked around a corner and told her we were only a few people away from the door–she hugged me. It was a really really fun night.

5) The music is worth it. Not every time, of course–some bands suck live, and sometimes you just aren’t feeling it. But in general, I feel that the *being there* aspect improves the music by about 20% on average and if you liked it already, that’s amazing. It’s neat to see what people look like and how bandmates interact with each other. Hell, it’s cool to see how they hold their instruments. I’ve never tried to meet anyone or get an autograph or whatever, but just being in the same room is pretty cool.

February 20th, 2013

Deathmatch

Every year I see a posting for a Broken Pencil short-story contest, click on it with interest and then recoil in horror. I am not Deathmatch Material. I like to think all us short story writers are our own special flowers, and though every reader might not like to sniff every flower, there’s room for all of us in the garden.

Broken Pencil’s Short Story Deathmatch posits a winner-take-all, hateful-comments-weed-out-the-week mentality, at least on the surface. In reality the comments from Canadian readers and writers aren’t *that* harsh–more, the commenters often seem to really engage with the stories. So though I quail from entering myself, I annually find myself drawn into a public-opinion-based literary contest that is actually about the literature.

Because, let’s face it, most public-opinion book contest *aren’t* about the books. At least, not as a “contest” is normally interpreted. Every few months, I’ll get an email or see on FB that an author I know/like/admire is in contention for one of these readers’ choice things, and could I please vote? Usually, I do it if I’ve read the book and liked it–I draw the line at voting for books I’ve haven’t read, no matter how much I like the author’s previous works or personality. But still, even if I know the book well and love it, my vote isn’t really fair, because normally I’ve read few or none of the competitors, so I don’t actually *know* the book I’m voting for is better.

In the interests of fairness, I should really go out and read every book in contention, at least a few chapters and skim to the end, before I make a bold claim that I know which the best one is. But let’s be honest, who is willing to do that without being paid? And who is paid–judges. That’s why I contend that the best people to judge contests are always the judges. It’s not because I’m elitist snob who privileges certain opinions above others; it’s because the only people who are going to read dozens of books in a year that they didn’t select for themselves, some hard to find, obscure, very long, or about topics that don’t interest them–are the folks on the payroll. The “popular” way isn’t even close to fair.

Amazingly, near as I can tell, the Deathmatch *is* fair. Of course, you can’t stop people voting without reading and the writers with friends working office jobs, who can set their phone alarms and go online to revote every hour, are going to do better than folks whose friends are teachers and construction workers. But it works really well. Each quarter final pits only two short stories against each other–it’ll take you maybe half an hour to read both, and then you can make a totally informed decision. You can choose to vote in any number of quarter finals–1, 2, 3, or 4 rounds. The semi-finals pit the winners against each other in 2 more rounds after–get this–everybody’s rewritten their stories to incorporate the feedback they got the first time around. How cool is that?

I voted in a couple quarter finals, but didn’t think to share the love. Now we’re in the semis, but it’s not too late–you can vote until Sunday midnight in the first semifinal, and all next week in the second. Start here and enjoy some weird fiction.

February 10th, 2013

Lately

Lately, I have been completely failing to like things my friends adore, which makes me sad. If you know me personally, you know I’m rarely happier than when falling in line with my peers. Which is why I’m so sad not to be enjoying *Mad Men* and completely baffled by *The Silver Linings Playbook*. I really have to accept that tastes aren’t universal, but I so *want* them to be.

Here’s something I DO like–a video of Alice the kitten with her head stuck in a kitchen chair. It would not be funny if she hadn’t freed herself 20 minutes later, but she did so it is, so enjoy!

The reason I don’t like MM and SLP is not because they don’t have kittens in them–really.

February 3rd, 2013

The Sky Has Always Been Falling

I came to Toronto to work in publishing at the beginning of 2002, just before Stoddart and General Publishing imploded. At the time, I was acquainted with only a very few bookfolk, but all were startled and scared about their jobs and the industry at large–they predicted that things were going to change a lot, for the worse, right away.

The sky was falling, and it’s been falling ever since.

Eventually, in my 10 years in the world of books–mainly publishing with brief forays into libraries, book stores, and the classroom–I’ve met more people, lots more people, in this world. And I discovered that publishing folks are uncomfortable without a catastrophe. It’s a hard job, making books for people who have so many shinier, easier forms of entertainment available for their leisure hours, and we–yeah, “we,” I’m in it–like it better when there is at least a focus for our frustrations, a suitable scapegoat for everything that makes delivering literature to readers so hard. Over the years it’s been everything from Dan Brown to Amazon to American dollars at par to ass-grabbing executives to Heather Reisman. I suppose this could be true of any industry–I’ve never worked in another one, come to think of it.

I started writing this post during the Douglas and McIntyre bankruptcy, lost interest as the news cycle wound down, and now I’m back because of the Globe and Mail books editor reshuffle. It’s always something! But every time is like the first time for most of us: I keep feeling like most of the conversation is all, “now we’re *really* doomed” with occasional breaks for nostalgizing how much better it was before this new bad thing happened. Which is fine, I guess, in small doses–cathartic, anyway. Bad things really have happened, we’ve got to get it out of our systems, and kvetching is sorta fun.

BUT–I feel like every literary article in the mainstream press that isn’t a straightup review lately is an end-of-days whinefest. We’re actually losing column inches across the board, but why are we squandering what we have saying over and over how it all is sucktastic?

And who knows, maybe it *is* that bad and my perspective is just clouded–see the name of this blog. But how is it going to get any better when our focus is so backwards facing, so sad about everything that has gone before that we’re unable to think of the future.

I’m hardly cutting edge, but I think some of my tiny bit of optimism comes from my unique position, which is actually multiple positions. I’ve published two old-fashioned, old-school paper books with a press that is actually still independent, still active, still innovative–somehow Biblioasis manages to keep their authors out in the world, relevant and engaged, while dealing primarily with printed pages.

But I’m also on the other side some of the time–5 days a week, in fact. I work in a publishing environment that is struggling pretty hard to do the new things–books that have no print dimension, or only a small one, but do things print could never do. Have I seen the future? No, I haven’t, but I have seen a lot of possibilities. It’s inspiring what people are coming up with. It’s also really really hard–this sort of work calls on a lot of skills that aren’t really active in most bookfolk. It’s another part of the brain–several other parts–and sometimes it makes me really sad how not-innate this stuff is to me. But I keep trying, because what choice do I have? Publishing *will* keep moving forward, and I would like to go with it as far as I can.

I do find it hard to be terribly pessimistic about the future of literature when I have seen all these great ideas–variations on the old and brand-new alike–that are coming forward. And if you’re more pessimistic than me, fine–there’s room to disagree. But surely the “we’re doomed, we’re doomed” folks must realize that they’re not the best friends a book ever had.

Literature is a vibrant part of culture–it reflects and questions and celebrates and protests what IS in our world, and therefore it has to be part of that world. If it’s hard to innovate right now, individuals and companies and the whole industry do suffer, but that’s the nature of growth. We’re just going to have to work harder. In tough times, well…you know what they say…

If you’re worried about who is going to be the next great books editor, apply for the job. If you think all the publishing houses suck, found a better one. If you don’t think there’s a book that really capitalizes on the new technologies, write one. Or write a book that transcends technology, that’s so good it would be relevant in any age. It’s something to shoot for, anyway.

Or hell, just read a book. Read anything, and engage with the content, and talk about what it is and could be. Even if the sky were truly falling, it would still be worth reading books, and I think it always will be.

January 30th, 2013

Rose-coloured reviews: The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

The Beauty Myth is the 11th book of my overlong 2012 Reading Challenge. Closer every day!

I know, I know–what’s wrong with me? This book came out in 1992 and 20 years later, I’m just getting around to it? In fact, my mom even read it right when it came out, and mentioned that my newly teenaged self might benefit from reading about where the enforced self-consciousness of females in our culture actually comes from. But I wasn’t interested. I did for some reason read Misconceptions when it came out in 2003. It was a fascinating but to me entirely irrelevant accounting of the medicalization–some would say patholisation–of childbirth in our society. It was also astoundingly gory–childbirth is, I guess. At that time, I didn’t know what an episiotomy was, and was much dismayed to find out. It was an eye-opening read.

At this point in history and in my life, *The Beauty Myth* was much less eye-opening. The link above on Naomi Wolf’s website says this book changed how we think about beauty and it’s true–Naomi Wolf’s dense and well-researched, imaginative and forceful treatise has wormed its way into the public consciousness. No one reads advertising or, indeed, models the same way anymore, and I’ve seen countless less-incisive writers spouting her ideas if they were original. They feel original; they feel as if we never didn’t know.

It was very interesting to go back to the source and read about how she investigated this stuff at a time when it just was what it was. But it was also…so earnest! One thing Wolf lacks is irony–her Biblical exegesis is soooo grad school (uglyness as sin), which doesn’t make it less brilliant. But sometimes, her inability to see pneumatic breasts and $100 skin cream as a humourous gets a little tiresome. I guess, too, I have the luxury of vantage point–Wolf didn’t know the near future would turn out the way it did. She assumed a woman’s ideal breast size would just keep getting bigger until we couldn’t walk upright, when in fact the ideal is now smaller but firmer, a la Megan Fox. Who knew?

So the reasons I don’t entirely relate to the book are various–20 years of distance and irony, the fact that I’m not exposed to a tonne of media–but intriguingly, the chapter that really resonated with me was the last one, “Violence.” I don’t know what I was expecting–domestic violence, I guess, which doesn’t really suit the context at all. It turns out that that chapter is about plastic surgery, and as in Misconceptions Wolf spares no sensibility in her gory evocation of how it really goes down.

Some of her panic is justified–in the late 80s and early 90s, women were dying from complications from liposuctions, breast implants were having to removed because they’d “gone rigid”–early plastic surgery was not a good scene. But it’s also improved greatly since the book was written, as all medical technologies do–she must have known that would happen. And also, though there’s always going to be a market for this sort of thing, most people actually don’t get their faces and bodies reconstructed. They don’t even think about it.

I was thinking this and then I realized…I did! I don’t think of it that way, because I was told by doctors that my jaw misalignment would eventually destroy the joint and therefore I needed the operation…but the fact remains that it was the same surgery many women have to look better. I’m always way too eager to explain I didn’t do it for cosmetic reasons, but the fuller story is a bit more complex. When I first began preparing for the operation, nearly 2 years out, they didn’t tell me I’d look different, and for some reason it didn’t occur to me that moving my jaw around would change my appearance. I found out when I was already well into the process and the surgeon, who was proud of his aesthetic successes, was disgusted that I didn’t want to be “improved.”

“Well, you don’t look normal now, you know,” he snapped. Now I think about what a weird statement that is–the ideal is not the median, and people with perfect faces are definitely not “normal.” Then I was just horrified. Anyway, he was extremely aggressive about persuading me that there was no non-stupid way to correct my medical problem without correcting my cosmetic “problem” to. I cried, but my jaw really hurt and I’d been preparing for the operation for a year. I didn’t research what I was told or try to dissect how much of the surgeon’s medical reasons were actually just a patholization of imperfection. I agreed to the operation, whatever it took.

I think that’s what Wolf was afraid of. Not that women walking down the street feeling good about ourselves will see a Botox poster and feel our self-esteem shatter, but that how self-perpetuating the beauty industry is, how proselytizing. It was strange for me, reading the book, not to get it and then to get it exactly.

*The Beauty Myth* is not a fun read, although unlike many academics Wolf writes with clarity, concision, and occasionally real beauty. It took me nearly 3 months to read it, and I stopped in the middle to read Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bossypants among other things, because it was just too sad for Christmastime. But it was instructive reading nonetheless and I feel good to have read it. Because far as we’ve all come in reading media for the commercial, coercive enterprise that it is, apparently we (or at least I) can still be stunned by an attack in the name of beauty. And it’s worth thinking about why.

For the record, I don’t look that different now, unless you’re one of the people who think I look very different. It depends on how you look at faces, I guess. I think I look fine and my new face is now entirely my face–I relate to it. However, although I know have a “perfect” ratio of space between my nose and upper lip, and lower lip and chin (seriously–I was told there’s a number), I still miss my old face, which was longer and seemed narrower. I believe Kathrine Mansfield would’ve called it “horsey” but it was mine and I always rather liked it.

November 9th, 2012

The Next Big Thing–want to play?

The Next Big Thing is an internet meme that’s been floating around over the past few weeks. It’s about writers’ works in progress–what they’re up to, how it’s going, why they’re doing it, etc. At the end, you’re supposed to tag more writers so they can have a crack at it. Shari Lapena kindly tagged me so I’ll be filling it out over the next few days, and will post my answers here when they’re ready.

As for whom I’ll tag…um! I’m really hesitant to approach people about their works in progress because for some, talking about undone work is tantamount to bringing on a curse, or guaranteeing it’ll never happen. Or they just find it really depressing. I’ve definitely felt like that at times and though I’m over the principle horror for now, no telling when it’ll come back–I definitely empathize with those in the throes of it now.

So, I thought I’d just throw the doors wide open instead: are any of you guys a) currently attempting in some fashion to write a book and b) willing to discuss it, even in a vague and elliptical fashion? If so, drop me a note in the contact (above) or comments (below) and I’ll sign you up.

Until the next wave of horror!

July 3rd, 2012

What happens when you self-search

Guys, I’m ashamed to admit it, but sometimes I enter my own name into search engines and go in 8 or 10 pages, just to see what comes up. I do this for a couple reasons–mainly to kill time when I’m feeling simultaneously vain and bored. But also because I’ve discovered that Google Alerts (yes, of course I have one–that’s not even vanity, just efficient) is not all that–it misses a lot of stuff. And while the good stuff will eventually make its way to me, no one ever passes on a really negative review–unless I make some more sadistic friends, it’s up to me to find the scathing ones.

Sometimes, however, my sad little searches turn up fun stuff. Often, it’s stuff I already knew about, only in a shiny new package. Like, I always knew the time and date of my reading at the Leacock Festival, so no one thought to tell me that it’s now up on slick event page (scroll down). And though I’ve already talked SO MUCH about the film “How to Keep Your Day Job” it’s still pretty awesome to see it has a little web presence. And sometimes folks even forget to tell me about a really lovely review (scroll down again). Also, did you know that someone with almost the same name as me is Dr. Date?

Finally, somehow I failed to attach my proper full name to my YouTube channel, so you can’t find it by searching me–I don’t think that’s a huge loss to anyone but I’m going to try to work this out. In the meantime, in case you couldn’t fine it otherwise, I’ll leave you with my favourite kitty video creation so far, Evan versus Gunter Grass.

April 5th, 2012

Stress-reduction Techniques

This is a random lost post–apparently I wrote it over a year ago, when I was moving, and never put it up. I was just rummaging through my drafts folder and found it. I guess the stress at the time just overwhelmed me. So the contextual references won’t make too much sense now, but I think the post itself is still good. Blast from the not-too-distant past!!
**

My stressball symptoms from the move (convinced that everything is filthy yet am too tired to clean, walking into walls, inability to carry on a conversation not somehow related to moving) abated somewhat last night. This was due to taking a 90 minute train-ride in order to have my parents feed me, listen to my problems, and let me play with their kitten. I haven’t been in my filthy, box-strewn apartment in close to 24-hours now, and the improvement is obvious. The only cloud on the horizon is that I will eventually have to go back there, and figure out how to dismantle the stereo. But first–Swiss Chalet!

For times when it is not convenient to return the the parental home, here are a few other stress-reduction techniques I have picked up over the years. I am really not the best person to be getting this advice from–I deal with stress about as well as ice sculptures deal with firebombing. This post is really as much a reminder for me as for anyone else.

–go outside and walk. The hamster wheel of the brain can be jarred out of its cycle by a new environment, brisk movement, and a different temperature. This is especially true in my current scenario, when it is the indoors that is *causing* my troubles, but the technique also works with writing or work-related stress–leaving the computer screen is highly beneficial in those cases, even if the absense is only brief. In those cases, I would recommend strongly leaving all communication devices behind–part of the benefit of walking is walking *away* from your problems–less helpful if you put them in your pocket.

–do a good deed. The altruism thing aside, I find it’s a good boost to my self-esteem when I do something nice for someone else. If someone says thank you for something and really means it, I feel less like a *total* waste of oxygen. Even holding the door open for someone or handing someone something they’ve dropped can work. For more major stress, giving blood really helps if you have time and are able to. You get the thrill of maybe saving someone’s life, plus you’re lightheaded and a little drunk-feeling–and eating a free cookie!

–do something you know you probably won’t fail at. I actually got this tip out of a Sassy magazine in the early 90s, but it still works. Doing something you have a high sucess rate at–cooking a meal you’ve made before, playing a sport or game you know well, writing a blog post–makes you feel better about your powers, and more able to deal with whatever you actually need to do.

–sleep. I’m actually not sure this is good advice, but when I’m really overwhelmed, I like to lose consciousness for a while.

March 18th, 2012

New Work

After *The Big Dream* launched last September, I had–and continue to have–lots of very cool opportunities. To do readings, to teach classes, to do interviews, sundry other fun stuff. All this coincided with a very intense period at my job, as well as wedding planning, cat discipline, a tax catastrophe, and just a lot of general life stuff. What I’m trying to say is, I haven’t been writing very much lately.

But I do still write–just very slowly, a few sentences here, a reworked page there, a complete of crisis of confidence every third week, as you do. Stories even occasionally get finished, though at a rate so much slower than my norm that it is kind of driving me crazy.

So new stories exist. In fact, I have lots of “new” work, because I didn’t stop working on *TBD* when it got published in September–I stopped in January when I handed it over to Biblioasis. I did work through copyediting, proofread, marketing materials, etc. in the ensuing 9 months, but basically I was free to write other stuff, and I had an incredibly productive period. Partially it was the same panic-induced work frenzy I had after handing in *Once*–“my baby is *gone*!!” partly it was that I was doing very little public-arena stuff since *Once* was three years old and the new book yet-to-be, and partly it was because I got a grant and took a leave of absence from my job.

What I am saying is, there are actually *lots* of stories of mine that most people would register as new because they haven’t been seen or heard anywhere. And though I’m kind of at a low ebb of confidence right now–not writing very much will do that to me–I do *like* some of these new pieces. I haven’t read any of them in public because I have been busy promoting *TBD* and I haven’t sent them to any journals because the aforementioned low confidence is making me a big fat chicken (also, my printer is broken).

Well–no more! I have done more than 6 months of only *TBD* readings and I’m sure one aberration will not cause anyone to forget the book exists. I can borrow a printer if I have to and a few rejection letters would probably not destroy me at this point in my life, despite my fears.

I am getting back on the horse. See you at Pivot at the Press Club on Wednesday.

June 24th, 2011

Up to date doings

A few things I am/will be/was up to:

Talking about punctuation in dialogue and John Metcalf’s (excellent) commentary on it, along with Cathy Stonehouse, on The Devil’s Engine on the Biblioasis blog.

I also participated in a discussion of Social Awkwardness Dread hosted by the lovely Jessica Westhead on Open Book Toronto. Hilarious and refreshing to see that so many of us are worried about the same sorts of things.

Upcoming is my story “Waiting for Women” on the wonderful short-story website Joyland around the middle of September, which I am very excited about! Yay!

And to provide some content other than just links, here is a short transcript of a conversation that took place in J’s car yesterday:

R: What’s that?
J: What?
R: There, on that Escalade? Above the name?
J: That’s a sticker. It’s supposed to look like bullet holes.
R: Seriously? They make stickers like that?
J: Yeah.
R: Well, it totally worked on me–I thought it was bullet holes. I am the target market for that sticker.
J: You seriously thought it was bullet holes?
R: Well considering it’s a minivan* and we’re in Scarborough…I was hoping to be wrong though.

*Internet research indicates an Escalade is not a minivan. But it looks like one!