Canada Reads 2008

I managed to remember to listen to Canada Reads this afternoon (thank goodness for time shifting, oh yeah!), and enjoyed the discussion. Especially considering that I really wasn’t interested in any of the choices this year, I’m glad that the panelists are doing such an amazing job of pulling apart the books and making them relevant. So far, my vote’s still with Icefields, and it’s still alive…but I have a feeling Not Wanted on the Voyage will come out on top.

My favourite part of today’s discussion? Dave Bidini and Lisa Moore going head to head (as much as possible) about the nature of why people read. Moore says it’s to grow; Bidini says it’s to have fun. My point? Does it have to be one or the other? I read to be inspired (like today, when I read this quote from Kundera: “She was too much at one with her body; that is why she always felt such anxiety about it.”) but I’m also not embarrassed to admit that I absolutely pick up chicklit for one reason, and that’s escapism.

My Interview With Beth Lisick

Is up on MSN today here. And if you don’t feel like clicking through, my favourite question and answer:

DM: What are you working on now? And are you still taking banana jobs?

BL: Still taking banana jobs. I always feel the need to state that I really love my banana suit. I definitely don’t do it because it’s the only job out there. And my friend Tara and I are working on a stage show called “Getting In On The Ground Floor and Staying There.” The title is in reference to the fact that we have been collaborating on comedy shows and films for the past 10 years, but have never “taken it to the next level.” Or any level, really. There were a few meetings with some Hollywood people where we were promised things. We’ll address those meetings in full detail in the show, as well as talk about things that make us laugh. Like the image of a bunch of helium balloons in a gazebo or those posters where a wet muscular man is holding a tiny newborn baby.

Creativity, in general, never ceases to amaze me.

The Fire


Perhaps it’s the same morbid curiosity or gravitational pull to tragedy that seems to orbit my life in general, but I went down to Queen and Portland today to see the devastation from the fire. On my way down, one of the stores was blasting The Last Waltz, and I smiled, despite the cold. Good grief that’s an appropriate record. The streets are all blocked off and there are no traffic sounds, which always amazes me in the middle of a city holding upwards of 4 million people at any given time.

I was standing there taking some pictures when a fire fighter smiled at me, and then came over for a chat. He said it was hard to believe there were huge buildings there just a week ago. That the fire kept them busy for longer than a while. That the investigation is still underway because they don’t know yet whether or not there was criminality involved. Also, he mentioned that they still haven’t accounted for all of the missing people (and that’s when a very irate neighbourhood woman started shouting at him that she was one of said souls). I left to let her get out what she needed to get out, and moved down taking even more pictures. Even though I grew up in a house with a fire fighter father, I’ve never really seen this kind of devastation up close, and the writer in me was sad and curious.

And even though we haven’t lived in the area for three years, and even then were up at College, over the course of my lifetime having spent so much time down there, whether it was with Amanda and the skinheads when we were seventeen, or during university when I was home for Christmas going to hear bands on the various different levels of the Big Bop, or returning a video with Zesty, or having brunch just north at Mimi’s, it’s hard not to realize that another part of the city just won’t be the same ever again.

Props In Unlikely Places

Kate sent over this review in NY Magazine of Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wide Web, a book that sets out to hand pick the best of the best in terms of the odd 80-million of us out there.

Most of Boxer’s [the author’s] selections don’t read like a new species of writing [and are quite overdone in terms of media coverage; Smoking Gun anyone?], but like very close cousins of once-venerable print genres that have been forced out of public discourse by the shrinkage of major American media: passionate arts criticism, critical theory, colorful polemics, and, above all, the personal essay. Sometimes it seems like blogging is just the apotheosis of the personal essay, the logical heir to 500 years of work by proto-bloggers such as Montaigne, Charles Lamb, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Parker, and E. B. White. I see no reason for drawing an artificial line between screen and print.

But I have to admit that I love this thought, and it’s one that I’ve been echoing for years in meetings, at seminars, and pretty much where anyone could possibly be listening. Hell, who wouldn’t want to be compared to Dorothy Parker, that’s quite a compliment for the peeps that made it into the book and onto the author’s lists.

Denis Johnson – "Dirty Wedding"

This story knocked me flat this morning on the subway with these couple lines: “The last time I’d been in the Savoy, it had been in Omaha. I hadn’t been anywhere near it in over a year, but I was just getting sicker. When I coughed I saw fireflies.”

Six pages of story that travel as fast as the El train the narrator rides, but so rich with the experience about being a messed up kid who couldn’t handle much of life, let alone getting his girlfriend pregnant and then not having the baby. If I hadn’t finished, I would have missed my stop just so I could read the end.

My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, Eugenides rich collection of love stories, made my day even before 9 AM. And I’m having a real hard time with this ridiculous hip hurting as much as it has over the past few days. The pain is angry, constant and frustrating. I hate limping, it makes me feel awkward, ungainly, and really unattractive; and it’s not as if I need any more pushing in that direction anyway, being in this kind of pain just amplifies all of the things I hate about myself and all of the things that have happened to my body as a result of the disease. It’s like the ache just settles into my whole being and forces its way into every little crack of my existence.

While I know that it’s probably got something to do with my shoes and the weather, I refuse to give in to either. Bitter cold and high heels, who knew they’d be the death of me?

Great Sentences As Dictated In An Email

Reasons why one should never arrive early to work:

Because that allows for the chance to run into a fellow named XXX, whom you haven’t seen in over 10 years, the last time he tried to, ahem, get friendly.

Said fellow is quite surprised to see you, and is confused as per why you might be riding the elevator in his public policy building, and then asks the ridiculous question, “So, how are you?” As if you can sum up 12 years of your life in the elevator ride to the 15th floor.

Goodness, what foolish youth.

My favourite response: Early mornings are never good for negative nostalgia.

Today

I won the Oscar pool at work. $48.00 means I can actually eat lunch this week.

Oh yeah, baby!*

EDITED TO ADD: The song from the movie Once that won the Oscar had this beautiful line, “Words fall through me and always fool me.”

I liked it so much I emailed it to myself so I could remind myself to put it up here today. Sort of a quote of the weekend.

Did it manage to defray the many hours of boredom punctuated here and there by a Jon Stewart funny. Um, no.**

EDITED TO ADD TO ADD: I saw the female peregrine falcon today. And no word of a lie, I ripped the headphones off my head, shouted: “WHO ARE YOU?” and almost threw myself out the window. Clearly, the whole bird-obsession thing has got to stop.

And my tragic hip is bothering me a great deal. Making my whole right leg hurt, which is kind of bumming me out.