November 10th, 2009

Alberta is attractive

I like it here. Here in Edmonton there is a river and a majestic legislature building and lots of good food and friendly people (most of whom my host seems to know; certainly someone in every coffee shop we enter!) Also swing dancers and linguistics labs and a bunny rabbit just hanging out in a park downtown. Also, the sentence has been uttered, “I might get so excited about the interactive VHS Star Trek game that I have to use my inhaler.” Clearly, there has been no lack of entertainment here.

And then there was a road trip to Jasper National Park. And though that bunny will always have a special place in my heart, it will be a bit crowded in with the deer, bighorn sheep, bald eagle, coyote, elk (some of them angry), crows and magpies. Also, while hiking in the show beside Medicine Lake, we discovered that the air smelled of cinnamon–clearly, some dried weed we had crushed underfoot emits this aroma. Magic! Anyone got ideas what it is?

Also, I’m just mildly proud of myself that I hiked with undo wussiness or death (albeit while wearing gloves I bought at Le Chateau). It is absolutely stunningly beautiful in Jasper, and there is something around every bend in the path, making the challenge of keeping on (and on) hard to resist. Here are a couple (of very many) pictures I took. These are from Athabasca Falls.

November 7th, 2009

Edmonton: the first 30 hours

Since arriving in Edmonton, I have done many things. I rode in a cab for half an hour without anyone except the driver (I have a taxi thing), I stayed up really late, I ran windsprints, I bought sweaters, I ate little tiny tacos, and mainly, I got to hang with AMT for enough time to talk about nonsense (my favourite sport). When I call someone long distance, I feel I have to have A+ material; when we are in the same room, I feel comfortable enough to blather.

Because the flight was in the middle of the night, I did not get the customary amount of reading done, though I did read a couple excellent essays in an ancient issue of Arc (2008, seriously, I’m behind). I was basically catatonic for the entire flight–not quite asleep, not quite awake. But again, no real jetlag, though I was pretty excited to go to sleep last night.

Today I am bright-eyed and ready to go meet AMT at her class. I get charge of the house keys and am determined to live up to the responsibility. Already, it’s not going so well, as I can’t figure out how to turn off several of her lamps, and being the person I am (a person who fears leaving lamps turned on all day will result in fire) I wound up unplugging them. Go, me!!

Ok, I’m to the streets of Edmonton, where it is bright and sunny and reasonably warm, but there is a wind warning in effect. Also, here they sell sandwiches at the Shoppers’ Drug Mart. It’s a whole other world.

RR

November 2nd, 2009

Reminder

that Amy Jones, Kathleen Winter and I are reading tomorrow at the Drawn & Quarterly store in Montreal, 211 rue Bernard West, at 7pm. And that it’s going to be awesome. And…yay!

I’m inarticulate because of being really really tired from Hallowe’en, which was also awesome, but went on an extra hour due to Daylight Savings, and then some, because my friends are cool and I try to keep up. I’m planning to sleep…now, pretty much, so I should be in better form by the time I’m in front of any audience tomorrow.

See you there?
RR

October 20th, 2009

Ottawa is Awesome

So I went to Ottawa this weekend to do a reading at the famous Manx pub (note that this link mentions an actual Manx cat but I failed to see one. I wonder if they meant a painting??) Anyway, I heart Ottawa and have some awesome friends there, but still I was frightened because it was my first solo reading. On a slate of three or so readers, as I usually am, some pressure is taken off because I can think to myself, “Well, he’s really good and she’s really good, so even if I just keel over after the intro, the audience will get a pretty good night out of it.”

Of course that didn’t happen and the reading went well (they almost always god well, I know I know; this has nothing to do with me freaking out or not). In case you weren’t there and feel sad that you missed it, here’s the play-by-play (thanks to G. for stellar photography).

July 17th, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews The Sleepless Goat Cafe and Workers’ Collective

So I spent some time in Kingston, Ontario, last weekend, where there is beautiful water, friendly people, buskerfest, and a lot of waterfront pubs. Kingston also contains the Sleepless Goat Cafe and Workers’ Collective. For just a moment when you first see it, you think that an independent cafe right next to a Starbucks would have a hard road. And then you really look at the place, and think it probably has a fairly well differentiated demographic.

Inside is even more non-Starbucksy: pumpkin orange walls, mismatched chairs, a big bookshelf full of oddities, and laidback counterstaff with “equal say in the way the business is run and in the decisions affecting their everyday worklives.” (That’s a quotation from the SG website explaining the concept of a workers’ collective.) The sugar’s organic, most of the waste is recycled or composted, and the graffito in the ladies’ room (there was only one) says, “Support public libraries,” in black sharpie.

So, reading that description, the SG *could* sound a little too crunchy to tolerate, but it’s actually just right. On my two visits, the staff seemed genuinely happy to see everyone who came in, and everyone who came seemed happy to be there. And a lot of people came in, and even better, a wide variety. Unlike some allegedly chilled-out cafes, this one didn’t seem to admit only deeply attractive people between 19 and 24. There were people with babies, an editor marking up a manuscript, elderly couples in hiking boots, gaggles of twentysomethings playing boardgames, several people with walkers, and of course a few tourists (ie., yours truly). Everyone was polite in accommodating babies, walkers and whatever else, and many seemed to know the staff and each other. So civilized.

Another big difference between SG and Starbucks is that this is a real restaurant, not just a coffee shop that will sell you a stale sandwich for $6 if you really want one. The menu is extensive and would be intriguing looking even it weren’t above the counter in day-glo chalk–lots of roasted vegetables, curries and Mexican-inspired stuff. The food is almost entirely veggie, except for the option of bacon or sausage or tomato slices with the “traditional” breakfast. Which actually makes sense; ask anyone who went (semi)veggie for non-taste reasons what they might break down for, and I betcha they’ll say bacon.

I had the “non-traditional” breakfast, which is vegan even though I’m not–I just like beans and rice–and my dining companion had the breakfast burrito, so we can pronounce the Mexican-themed breakfasts very good, anyway (if this were a real review, I would have tried a wider variety at different times of day, I suppose). You don’t see beans & rice many places in Canada (I found out I like that in Costa Rica) so I really enjoyed my breakfast. Seemed a little over-carbed to serve it with home fries and toast, but whatever. The bread was the “famous” Dakota, which was just a little too full of seeds and grains for my liking, but pretty good none-the-less.

Since I only ate the one meal there (the other day we just had coffee–SG has excellent coffee) I don’t know if our long wait for hot food was typical. If one were in a major hurry, there were a bunch of appetizing pre-made salads and sandwiches and muffins in the display case. But it was a comfy place to wait (you order at the counter but the staff serves you at your table–you have to tell them where you plan on sitting!) Also, as a sign by the register indicates, The Goat has games!! So you can sign yourself out the Scrabble board (or something else, I don’t know what) and pass the time in that way. On a rainy morning, a Scrabble board is a great gift, even though there were two boards in the box and an usual number of Us, as well as some unidentified food particles. Also, the food is so good as to be worth waiting for.

In short, the Goat is good–go!

Try a little more try a little more
RR

July 9th, 2009

Life

This morning, as I planned this post, it was going to be titled “Life is Good”, because:

1) the Joyland Joyathon last night was so amazing and fun and funny and well-attended by awesome people (most of the pictures turned out terrible, due to failures of both technology and technician [though they are still available on Facebook, if you feel the need], but here’s a decent one of Brian Joseph Davis and Emily Schultz kicking off the festivities:

2) I’m heading to pretty Kingston for the weekend.

June 25th, 2009

Post-cottage miscellany

That orange chair is where I’ve been more or less steadily the past few days, chatting with old friends, petting the dog, reading The New Yorker fiction issue (oh, Jonathan Franzen, you’ve done it again!), eating cookies, and periodically staring up in stunned silence at the beauty around me. So *that’s* what people like about cottage weekends. Now I know.

But I am, as ever, glad to be back in the 416. Happy things that greeted me upon my return are phone calls from friends, emails from same, my beloved indoor toilet, a nice review in Gloss, and the news that Canadian Notes and Queries new website is up, with tonnes of good stuff, including my first ever published review. I’m pretty proud.

My little review is the smallest reason to go get a copy of–or subscribee to!!–CNQ. It’s a great journal and full of things to make you think. As Dan points out, putting your name on a subscriber list to a litmag is, these days, pretty much a political act, tantamont to signing a petition in favour of keeping small creatively and critically engaged communities alive and funded. So if there’s a journal you believe in and you can possibly afford it, put your name down.

I was helpless as a chess piece/lifted up by someone’s hand
RR

June 2nd, 2009

Just give me the music

One of the most terrifying things I’ve heard recently was, “Isn’t the music today awful? There were so many good albums when we were in high school and university, and now it’s all crap.” This was from someone my own age!!

Now I’m sure the music scene has boom and bust years, but there’s always someone doing something interesting. Moreover, there’s always “crap”–you tell me how Tiffany‘s better than Britney. And there will always be a place for powdered-sugar pop–for me, that place is at the gym or when I’m mopping the floor.

I am not too worried about getting older–if my motto is “Smarter every day” (and it is, mainly) then any more days I accumulate must be to the good. I do worry a little about *acting* old–nostalgic, reactionary, inflexible, all those good stereotypes. This “It’ll never be as good as it was” thinking will give you arthritis, absolutely.

Thus, one more reason to stay open-minded, or at least to keep listening to the radio. My trip to Japan gave me lots of exposure to fun music, although little of it actually Japanese. I did hear The Cigarettes playing in the street in front of Kyoto station, but they didn’t have an album for sale, so I won’t be hearing them again (sidebar: I wanted to go toss some change in their guitar case, but Ben restrained me; apparently that is *so* gauche in Japan. But…they busk for fun??) They did give me an English flier with a website on it, which I foolishly believed would allow me to find recordings of their music. But the English site is so incoherent and linkless as to be useless. Cigarettes, where are you?

Ok, for recommendations one can actually find, I scrolled happily through the Air Canada inflight entertainment options, and found some pretty good stuff (although I was semi-insane after so many hours in an airplane, so take that with qualifiers). One such good was Eva Avila. She’s definitely in the Tiffany/Britney sphere, but quite catchy and untrashy, in my opinion. I expect the song that gave this post its name has been all over treadmills and high-school dances this year–it’s a chaste song about dancing, but not *that* chaste (“just let me do it just let me do it”). Oh, and she’s cute and *Canadian*. Nice.

A little higher up the pop-music hierarchy, we have Taylor Swift. I ended up picking Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet to mention in my Pages interview response about bookish love songs over Swift’s Love Story. But it’s still a warm and charming mainstream country love song, and she’s written lots of’em on, as I discovered on the plane. It does seem that this is a popular artist who has some real talent, both vocally and songwritingwise. I feel confident saying that about a popstar people mock me for liking (you know who you are) because Sasha Frere Jones agress with me.

On a non-top-forty note (note, ha!), my brother and I did an iPod exchange on the Shinkansen and I thus discovered the cheerful histrionics of The Films. I was trying to think what they remind me of, and it’s probably lots of things, but maybe a shot of The White Stripes and a mixer of Franz Ferdinand. Or something like that…

Also on Ben’s iPod was my best musical find of the trip, Bright Eyes. I’m actually not sure that this qualifies as the newest music, as the band’s website hasn’t been updated since 2007, the same year their last album was released. Nevermind, it’s still cutting edge weird, two years on.

Of course, I am a writer (thought that’s not been so obvious on this blog of late) and when I say a band is brilliant I often mean they have brilliant lyrics. I actually think Bright Eyes is up to it musically, but it is the lyrics that make me stand still and close my eyes to listen. Here, for you, “When the Curious Girl Realizes She Is under Glass”:

Tomorrow when I wake up I’m finding my brother
And making him take me back down to the water
That lake where we sailed and laughed with our father
I will not desert him. I will not desert him

No matter how I may wish for a coffin so clean
Or these trees to undress all their leaves onto me
I put my face in the dirt and then finally I see
The sky that has been avoiding me

I started this letter, I’m going to send it to Ruba
It will be blessed by her eyes on the gulf coast of Florida
With her feet in the sand and one hand on her swimsuit
She will recite the prayer of my pen

Saying, “Time take us forward, relief from this longing
They can land that plane on my heart, I don’t care
Just give me November, the warmth of a whisper
In the freezing darkness of my room”

But no matter what I would do in an attempt to replace
All the pills that I take trying to balance my brain
I have seen the curious girl with that look on her face
So surprised she stares out from her display case
~~~~

You see what I mean?

Of course, new music can be exhausting–you have to pay so close attention! I must say I was shockingly glad to find Closer, Sarah McLachlan’s Greatest Hits on the airplane audio menu–the soaring “Vox” was like a magic portal back to 1999 and I listened to the whole album a great number of times (the good/bad thing about 12-hour flights is there’s time to do *everything* a great number of times). Also on the airplane was a new album by Oasis, which seemed reasonably good. However, after a few minutes I had to turn it off because it was just to different from What’s the story, morning glory?. Then I hummed a little of “She’s Electric”, which cheered me, but I also felt my knee joints creak a little.

She’s got a cousin / actually she’s got bout a dozen / she’s got a bun in the oven / but that’s nothing to do with me
RR

January 18th, 2009

TTC Tribute

It’s hard to believe that the Ottawa Transit Strike is still ongoing, making everyday tasks a nightmare for so much of the population. In Toronto, transit strikes and strike threats are grounds for quick action and, indeed, panic, and I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case everywhere.

I am grateful (almost) every day to live in a city with a more or less wonderful transit system, to be able to go wherever I want to go without a favour, an insurance policy or thousands of dollars of investment in motor vehicle. This was revelatory when I first moved to a big city, and I’m still mildly shocked that I could, if I put enough thought into it, go to the airport or the zoo at 2am on a Thursday without telling anyone or even being conscious en route, all for $2.75. This should be a basic right of city citizens everywhere, and it’s worth getting upset that the citizens in Ottawa now lack those freedoms.

When it’s awful and slushy and cold, it’s about as easy for transit-takers to get around town as when it’s pleasant–not so for car commuters. But certainly, life is less easy for those who operate the vehicles, so between the weather and the sitch in Ottawa, it seems a good time to pay tribute to a random sampling of TTC awesomeness:

–drivers who stop when they see people running
— drivers who give directions, and call you up to the front just before your stop
–drivers who patiently hear out people who don’t make sense and don’t know where they are going, but are very very angry about it
–drivers who smile/make eye-contact/make jokes/just say hi whilst they are navigating through sleet and rush-hour and some woman is screaming about someone stepping on her toe

The TTC often brings out the worst in people, granted, just as being smushed up against strangers often will no matter where you are, but it occasionally brings out some loveliness from strangers I would not encounter otherwise. Life this:
–the man who chased me *off* the bus last night to give me back my forgotten gloves
–the glee with which people leap to give their seats to pregnant ladies and people with canes and crutches (sadly, such a polite city is Toronto is that this does not happen with the elderly, for fear of giving offense to someone who doesn’t consider him/herself elderly. You’d have to be about 150 to get more than a tentative tap and half-thigh raise and questioning shrug.)
–when someone compliments me on my reading material
–when Kerry was trying to explain something to me about a George Michael song opening and I was too dumb to remember the bit, so she sang it, the two old ladies next to her beamed (Kerry has a very good voice).

And now for a list of my very favourite bus and subway routes:
Toronto–7 Bathurst, 25D Don Mills (I never went beyond Steeles, I just like the D), 86 Sheppard (Zoo bus!), 99 Arrow Road, 510 Spadina Streetcar, 352 Lawrence West night bus, and special category prize goes to 122 Graydon Hall, which is technically an awful irregular bus that disappears for half an hour in the least rain, but I love it because I met so many good people whilst cursing it.
Montreal–On STCUM (yes, I know it’s not called that anymore, but that’s really too bad) I particularly enjoyed the 24 Sherbrooke, 80 Parc, and of course the blue line of the Metro.
New York–On the MTA, the A Train seemed particularly nice. I fell asleep on the F Train, which probably indicates a high comfort level.
Boston–To be honest, I never knew what I was doing on the MBTA, but I always got where I was going on those funny about-the-rails tracks, so let’s count it all as a win.
Tokyo–Not there yet, but oh my goodness, how sexy!!!

Soldier on, Ottawa. We transit-takers stand (and ride) with you in our hearts!

My heart only works
RR

November 17th, 2008

The Day I Went to America

…was yesterday. Whilst there, I

Saw
–an inflatable and operational Ferris wheel, each car of which was filled with a lovable Christmas-related cartoon character. It was going backwards (cost: $US179)
–big hair
–7 massage chairs (cost: $400-600)
–infinite gum
–a brand of candy called “Palatable Pleasures” (cost: too much, considering)
–more than 4 purple houses (we lost track); one each that was teal, lime-green and salmon
–children making a scene

Heard
–nonstop Christmas carols, excepting one song by Genesis and one by Steve Winwood
–drawls
–“honey,” “sweetie” and “darling” from people serving us in stores and restaurants
–children making a scene
–a refreshing lack of honking no matter how poorly anyone was driving

Consumed
–FOUR different kinds of pop, all unknown and unattainable north of the border($1.89 to $2.25, so worth it)
–one bite each of three truffles (these were being shared; it was complicated and messy, but very good)(Cost: won from a scratch’n’win)
–all-you-eat salad and breadsticks at Olive Garden (cost: ~$15)
–fistfuls of Trix on car-ride home (cost: approximately 1/8 of $3.59)

Purchased
–two pairs houndstooth tights (cost: $4 and $6)
–box of Trix ($3.59)
–2L (or Imperial measurement equivalent) bottle of Cherry Coke Zero ($1.59)
–2 3-packs of Orbit Bubblemint gum (cost: $3.59 each)
–*Midnight’s Children* by Salman Rushdie (cost: $15)

Felt
–that things are very very slightly, almost imperceptibly, different since November 4 (cost: priceless)

(c’mon, you knew I was building towards that)

I found music/and he found me
RR