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Picnics! Everybody loves a picnic. Birthday parties, too, and guitars. And many people enjoy wine! Ergo, what better way to celebrate Rebecca's birthday than to bring wine, sammiches, and guitars to High Park and have a picnic? That definitely made for an awesome weekend. High Park is a pretty magical place; it's right in the middle of the city, but it's so lush and quiet that you could altogether forget where you were as long as you don't look south and see the Lakeshore condos peeking over the trees. Also, Toronto seems to have the most docile geese ever; some stupid kid was chasing a dozen of them yesterday, and they actually ran away. If he tried that trick in Waterloo, he'd be lucky to walk away with his eyesight and all of his fingers.
Not too much else is going on. I've been to a few too many goodbye parties for departing coworkers, and I'm fighting a losing battle with my reading list (I just got transferred back upstairs to fiction, and there is so much I want to read. The fiction staff are a terrible influence), but life is still mostly just the steady cycle of work, sleep, visiting friends, and relaxing at the apartment. Not especially blogworthy, but pleasant.
My summer of concert awesomeness just got a little bit less awesome. Inside Out reneged on their tour budget, and it doesn't look like Pain of Salvation or Beardfish will be joining Dream Theater in Toronto this summer. That's two times missing out on seeing PoS in concert now. Bah humbug.
Speaking of Dream Theater, I got their new album, and it's...well, exhausting is the first thing that comes to mind. I still lovelovelove their 1990s/early 2000s material, but my joke about their becoming the Harlem Globetrotters of Metal is becoming sadly true. They've never been a band you listen to for the lyrics, but (with the possible exception of "The Shattered Fortress"; it's hard to fault a guy for finding refuge from alcoholism in writing music) one gets the impression that they've truly stopped giving a shit about the vocal side of their music and are just using it as filler between the mind-bending solos. This, of course, means that the breezy ballads in the middle are ear-bleedingly pedestrian, and the gigantic epic that closes the album also sounds phoned-in. I don't know if the clumsy lunge toward melody is a sign of an aging band that can no longer sustain the polyrhythms and shredding of their glory days, or bullying from their new label, or just an ill-considered change in direction, but it's really not working. There's playing on that album that is up there with their best, but it feels like I bought a wilted salad for the croutons. Time to take some advice from the man whose son they'll be touring with this summer: shut up and play yer guitar.
Yes, it's summertime in Toronto, and that means...contract renegotiations. The municipal workers walked out on the weekend, knocking out everything from daycares and summer camps to garbage collection, and the employees of the LCBO (our province's liquor monopoly) are deciding tonight whether to follow suit. I don't know either dispute well enough to pick a side, but it's certainly going to be an interesting summer while those battles rage on. The LCBO across the hall from my till was an utter madhouse today, with flocks of thirsty citizens as well as cart-filling maniacs who I can only hope were bartenders stocking up (how's that for brutal? The LCBO's monopoly is apparently such that even the barkeeps have to go through the government warehouses for imports). Rotting garbage, bored children, and prohibition: possibly a perfect storm.
Summer life trundles along as usual. I read, I rock, I try my best to avoid the latest wave of bookstore office politics. There were hints of summer romance for a while there, but that flamed out spectacularly at a Kensington hipster party that also somehow happened to include no less than three people I knew from Guelph. Ah well.
Next step: computer shopping. My venerable laptop is slowly going terminal (pun intended!), and I'm ridiculously stoked at the idea of a computer on which I can actually record music.
Ah summer, when a young man's heart turns to...not a heck of a lot. I've been on a bit of a bookstore autopilot, with interludes for lots of reading, occasional drinkin'-with-coworkers hilarity, a random Guelph overnight, and lots of music.
- David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- Will Self's How the Dead Live
- Chuck Palahniuk's Pygmy
- Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day
- "Beautiful, sunny day here in Toronto! Martin (the drummer) and I went to the arts centre and ate oysters. I hope this does not hurt my metal cred."
- "I once saw the stock photo from that album on a TV ad for PMS. True story."
- "I think I should cut my hair like Geddy Lee's."
- "Tomorrow we're playing a church in Pittsburgh. Right on the fuckin' altar. I am slightly uncomfortable with this."
One exam down. Oddly enough, it was sweet, sweet candy. Looks like my lucubration paid off.
The last week has been pretty damn fantastic: lots and lots of high culture and shenanigans. I went to the newly-renovated AGO on Wednesday to marvel at all the awesome art (highlights: pre-Raphaelites, a really cool Magritte, and the mind-bendingly intricate wood and ivory carvings on the ground floor), and then to the ROM, where I promptly completely and utterly geeked out over the dinosaurs. No matter how old I get, it's impossible to look at the gigantic Allosaurus and not giggle maniacally. Plus, I was in good company; long-lost Guelphites were in town for both tours, with the usual hilarity ensuing.
Next step: face my pending mortality and turn 23 on Friday. Dammit.
This weather is stunning. I'm almost ashamed that I took a brief break from my errands day to check my Internets and update things.
Firstly: apparently Vox is being a pooface about transferring my posts over to LJ, so those of you who read me from over there should go back and catch this massive end-of-semester roundup.
Also: the sheer amount of awesome concerts over the next little while is making my bank accounts sad this month. Opeth, Decemberists, and Porcupine Tree (on Sept. 30?! Who the balls puts tickets up five months early, particularly for a seated venue?) are all coming up, and Rotate This! (seriously, fuck Ticketmaster. Go to RT instead. The staff are kind of dicks, but it beats "service fees" the size of fat children) pretty much owns my soul now. Prog Nation (Dream Theater! Pain of Salvation! Zappa! Beardfish! Oh my!) hasn't even been announced yet. It's going to be a loud, loud summer.
Thirdly: I haven't blathered about the awesomeness of a new album for a while, so here's a loud recommendation: Mastodon's Crack The Skye. It's dorkily high-concept in the extreme (astral projection! Rasputin! Assassinations! Bears in ill-fitting hats!), but I'm really enjoying their new sound. There's much less random barking in the vocals, and it turns out that the screamer-in-chief has a lovely, resonant, nasal rumble of a voice when he feels like it. I think I might still be too conservative a metalhead to dig their earlier albums (Leviathan is pretty fuckin' badass, but a bit too chaotic for me), but I definitely love this new direction.
Good heavens, blog, it's been a while.
- Apparently I am now a star of the stage! One of my coworkers is a theatre tech student down at Ryerson, and I got drafted to be her male lead after the original male lead bailed on her. I had to play the ghost of an assholish businessman, contemplating his life's errors in Purgatory while an offstage "stage manager" taunted him. The crowd loved all of the cutesy theatre in-jokes in the script, which was good, as it drew attention away from me being by far the least-schooled actor present that night. Still, I think we did alright, and I hope my colleague gets a good mark for our efforts.
- David Mitchell, David Mitchell, David Mitchell! After all that sounding-off about Cloud Atlas, I've now polished off Ghostwritten and most of number9dream, and I think I'm in love. I'm blown away by how he tangles plot threads and changes styles so effortlessly. He's also got a rare gift for writing thriller-style plots without getting all twitchy and breathless, and I love how he takes background characters from his earlier novels and fleshes them out again later (for example, a character in Ghostwritten mentions his troublesome brother in an aside, said brother then becoming the protagonist of one of the Cloud Atlas novellas).
- If the rumoured film adaptation of Cloud Atlas happens, I will burn everything. EVERYTHING.
- Sushi On Bloor is closed! Goddamn. However (a challenger has arrived!), New Generation, a mere block away, is a worthy successor to the cheap-sushi-in-the-Annex throne. I'm a little scared by some of the specialty maki I saw on the menu; the "Canadian" one with smoked salmon and asparagus is cute, but the unagi-and-cheddar roll is either heresy or an orgasm wrapped in rice. Maybe both.
- Things that trip up gaijin like me: apparently "kewpie," when seen on a sushi menu, means Japanese "QP"-brand mayonnaise (combine it with Thai sriracha hot sauce and you get Dynamite Sauce, apparently. Huh). Me, I think of these and cry a little.
- I've spent a long time corrupting my friend Rebecca with my musical tastes. This time, she turned the tables and dragged me out to an Ian Thornley concert. We somehow wound up in the very front row at the Phoenix, leaning comfortably on the security barrier. After an opening act so bad that even Mr. Thornley made fun of them (imagine the Clash without talent or chutzpah. Or don't), we were treated to a hell of a show. I mostly just knew the material from his Big Wreck days (Murphy's Law of Brad at a Concert: my favourite BW track, "Ladylike," didn't get played, but at least we got "That Song"), but I wound up enjoying the whole set. Thornley's a talented dude, and he brought a monster of a backing band. Now, if only I could figure out where I've seen his bassist before, I'd be a happy man.
- My goodness, the Indigo people sure know how to party. I was invited to "The Ranch" (looks like my old Guelph friends aren't the only ones with a penchant for naming rental homes) for a party on the weekend, and the usual chaos ensued. I love my coworkers even more with their vests off. I fear, however, the house brew. They devised this bastard concoction called "Sip'n'Go," which is a blend of rye, cheap beer, and frozen pink lemonade. Tastes delicious, hits like Holyfield.
- Wanna see a gorgeous, clever, dangerously addictive computer game? Go play World of Goo. Any game that can make a grown man cheer because he built a tower out of balls has to be doing something right.
So I've been talking with academic types at U of T about what next year is going to look like. Rumblings of a lateral move. Diversifying or altogether changing what I'm going to be doing under the aegis of Toronto. Whatever it takes to reduce the odds of lobbing myself out a fourteenth-floor Robarts window.
I swear my phonology prof was under the influence of something today. That was one hilarious session. In addition to discussing the joys of stress placement algorithms, we also learned about ice cream, the Italian public education system, and Alabama Slammers (orange juice, Southern Comfort, amaretto, and sloe gin, apparently, which sounds like something I should try this summer).
Speaking of booze, yesterday was a terrifying day to be out on the town. I was too busy to take part in the St. Patrick's festivities myself, but I was downtown for just long enough to have to help some lost girls find a subway station, and then on my own ride home to be pelted with flung pamphlets as some drunken asshole had a fit and started throwing things. I felt sorry for police and security folks.
Other things. Um. Watchmen was pretty much what I expected. They nailed the 80s aesthetic super-well, the celebrity "cameos" were pitch-perfect (the opening-credits montage! Wow!), and Snyder's fetishistic devotion to capturing every tiny nerdy detail in the panels (and even adding a few of his own, e.g. Ozymandias' "Boys" folder on the computer) was fantastic. Alan Moore was right, though. The damn thing is unfilmable. The movie was a messy distillation of a much larger work, and I'm not just referring to the ending (which, while actually kinda clever, was still a travesty). I can't imagine how confusing it would have been for those who haven't read the book.
Also, if you haven't seen this yet, you need to. Some Israeli DJ watched thousands of those goddamn Youtube music performance videos (guitar in the bedroom, drums on the porch, trombone recitals, keyboard lessons, singing in the bathroom mirror, etc.) and layered them into some brilliant, brilliant music. My mind was blown.
