Larocque and Roll

Tuneage, Part the First March 30, 2008

I finally got around to making “liner” notes for one of my playlists. To keep things concise, because I tend to get verbose from time to time, I did the notes in Twitter so I knew I’d have a limit to how much I could write.

Without further ado, here’s playlist #1.

~ Big Sugar - AAA Aardvark Hotel: Old skool rock/honky tonk. My fav Cnd. band during the 90’s

~ Buck 65 - Wicked And Weird: All road trips should be this carefree and aimless. [But with a better car!]

~ Sleater-Kinney - Entertain: What sarcasm and anger should always sound like. Done for love, not $$ [Not sure what I was getting at; perhaps that there’s a difference between making music for the love of it and making it for the money.]

~ Loud Lucy - Ticking: Still reminds me of high school. Should be listened to at max volume.

~ Sloan - She Says What She Means: Love love love Sloan. It’s hard to say the things you need to say. [It was also hard to pick one Sloan song.]

~ Average White Band - Pick Up the Pieces: Everyone needs to just get the funk out!

~ Joel Plaskett Emergency - Nowhere With You: Song about my Friday nights in the ‘Fax. [Not all of them - just the ones that ended at Pizza Corner at 2am.]

~ The Inbreds - You Will Know: Long lost jem of a band. My sis and I fought over this CD for years. [That’s the short story. The longer story is that I loved this CD, and I didn’t think she ever listened to it, so I “borrowed” it. Apparently, she noticed its absence and “borrowed” my Portishead CD until I gave The Inbreds back.]

~ Blur - There’s No Other Way: In battle of Blur vs. Oasis, I always side with Blur. Song from gr. 9 [As in, this was one of the songs that got me through the first year or two of high school and cemented my love of the Madchester scene when everyone else was listening to grunge.]

~ James - Sit Down: Another high school flashback. Quirky and an oasis from grunge music saturation.

~ Modest Mouse - Jesus Christ Was an Only Child: Simple but charming. Folksy and weird.

~ Mötley Crüe - Dr Feelgood: To be part of my posse, you must headbang to this song at max volume. [Hee. There’s a story about how this is the song that Karen and I bonded over on our way to my first staff retreat in Sault Ste. Marie when I worked in Sudbury. It’s long, and you’d need to see the flailing that accompanies the telling.]

~ Soul Coughing - Screenwriters Blues: Amanda Bishop, debating bud, where are you? You gave me this! [Amanda was a friend of mine from my high school years as a model UN debater; she went to a different high school, but we always hung out at competitions with a couple of other people. One day we were hanging out at her house, and she played this CD of a band she thought were teh bomb - and she was right, they were. This is the song that always reminds me of her.]

~ Zildo Ildo - Workin’ Class Blues: A secret band who were not-so-secretly awesome. [They were one of those bands you had to know someone who knew someone in the band to have every heard of them - it was through Julie’s ex that I knew them. Back in the Napster years, I would get really excited messages from people wanting to know how I’d heard of them.]

~ Wonderstuff - Closer To Fine: WAY better than the original. This is what it should sound like. [It’s a song about disillusionment, and should be sung by someone who can pull of the pissed-off sound, which Miles Hunt always could.]

~ Alanis Morissette - So Pure: I dare you not to dance or be happy listening to this song.

Shucks March 27, 2008

See what I did there? Disappeared for almost a month without updating? It’s not intentional because I did have several ideas during that time, but never got around to writing them down. And now I’m writing the second lamest blog cliche [1] - blogging about why I didn’t blog. I’m so hip it hurts.

In a nutshell, here’s what’s been going on:

~ I went to see the movie “Jumper” I can think of worse ways to spend 90 minutes than drooling over Hayden Christensen, but man - the ending made not a lick of sense. It was so abrupt and open-ended, I felt like I’d missed something. Even movies where you already know there’s going to be a sequel give you some kind of closure.

~ I got sick. Not really really sick, and not with something that I can say with any degree of certainty what it was. It wasn’t a cold, it wasn’t a flu, it wasn’t bronchitis or pneumonia. Rather, it was a combo of all of them, combined with what I like to call Super Drag Ass. Oh, and PMS cramps - there’s no illness so bad that it can’t be made worse with the addition of gut-clenching pain. Joy. Lacking a better description, I began calling it The Malaise - treatment includes copious amounts of ginger ale, several episodes of “Crossing Jordan” and a complete disregard for personal hygiene.

~ I made several playlists for a friend and liked them so much I’ve been listening to them constantly. (Really, if I’d been lacking something to post about, I should have thrown one of them up and let you bask in the awesomeness of my ability to put together a well-crafted playlist.)

~ On my real birthday, I went winery hopping with my sister and cousin. Vineland Estates had the best selection of regular and reserve wines [2], while Malivoire had a smaller selection of uniformly terrific wines [3]. Angel’s Gate was a bit disappointing [4], and Cellar Bench was notable for their selection of ice wines [5].

~ After months and months of threatening to do it, I finally purchased the complete series of “Queer as Folk (US)” and the first four seasons of “The L Word” for the library. It’s taken that long to work up the guts to do it, because I know it’s going to be controversial, and that there will be complaints from some people in the community (my boss and the other managers have been supportive, as have the rest of the crew in the knitting guild).

To wrap up: if anything interesting happens between now and next time, I will write about it this time instead of making vague promises to myself and then getting on with my life.

[1] First lamest blog cliche: blogging about your blog.
[2] I love love love their Dry and Semi-Dry Rieslings, and also got a bottle of their Elevation Cabernet Merlot and their Sauvignon Blanc.
[3] Their Gewurtztraminer is fab, and I came home with bottles of their Chardonnay Musque and the Moira Vineyard Chardonnay.
[4] Have you ever heard the Monty Python wine sketch? At one point, I described a particularly nasty red as having a “bouquet like an aborigine’s armpit” and meant it.
[5] From there, I got a bottle of maple syrup (from a local sugar bush) ice wine.

Not my birthday March 6, 2008

In the last few years, I’ve been lucky enough to have the day off on my birthday - in most cases, it’s just the way things worked out. I’d spend the day living a lifestyle I could become very accustomed to [1] and enjoying the peace and quiet. [2]

This year… not so much. My birthday falls smack dab in the middle of the Easter Weekend, and if I wasn’t going home to visit the whole fam-damily, I’d be working. Bummer. Plus, the day off closest to my birthday will be spent travelling home [3].

That left today to do all my traditional birthday things, so here I am, in my pjs with a stack of books beside me. I’m boiling water for coffee, and there’s a small container of artichoke and asiago cheese dip in the fridge. Later, there will be apple crisp with cranberries and quite possibly whipped cream. Maybe a pot of chai to round out the afternoon.

Everything at work is getting busier and busier, so I’m just going to take the day to unwind and relax.

[1] Reading all day and eating whatever the hell I wanted.
[2] A few months ago, I was trying to figure out how old I’d be on this birthday, and promptly had a mini-panic attack. I’m almost 32? When did this come to pass? Wasn’t I just 29 last week, or something like that?
[3] Yes, there are Sundays, but Sundays are for laundry and groceries and housework. And there is a Saturday between now and then, but I’m going out of town that day.

Bookish in January and February March 2, 2008

I was surprised to discover that I forgot to post my January reads. Well, maybe not surprised - February was an insane month, and if I missed stuff it was because other stuff jumped up in my face and made me forget the other stuff. Or something like that… the metaphor is kind of tortured.

Anyhoodle - on with the reads for the past two months!

~ Willig, Lauren. The Emerald Deception (6.5)
More serious, less frivolousness than the other books. However, there was a couple of Monty Python references that cracked me up.

~Cruise, Jennifer and Bob Mayer. Agnes and the Hitman (3)
Highly implausible, too many plots to keep straight. Didn’t really like any of the characters.

~ Moore, Alan. Lost Girls (7)
For all the controversy about this book, it was not as bad as I was expecting. The art was not excessively detailed, yet very colourful.

~ Gabaldon, Diana. Lord John and the Hands of Devils (7)
Basically, it was three novellas featuring Lord John. It was well-written although not as compelling at Brotherhood of the Blade (probably because it was three stories, not one. Wait, I already said that…)

~ Rice, Christopher. Blind Fall (8)
This one was an ARC left on the staffroom table [1], and which I snapped up. Pretty good overall - it explored a number of overlapping issues which got confusing at times, and there was a little too much dialogue, but otherwise a good read.

~ Vizzini, Ned. It’s Kind of A Funny Story (8)
An unusual story about a teenager who institutionalizes himself when he seriously begins to contemplate suicide. What was usual about is was that the parents and family were incredibly supportive of his decisions, and that he knew he needed help and wanted to get better. It’s one of the better Young Adult novels I’ve read in a while.

~ Juby, Susan. Another Kind of Cowboy (6.5)
My horse-obsessive days are long behind me, so it was kind of hard to work up any kind of enthusiasm for this horse-themed YA novel. However, while I found the plot somewhat predictable, it was still a far cry better than a lot of the horsey books I read in my youth because the characters were more realistic, the situations were appropriate to teenagers, and the ending was slightly bittersweet.

~ Dessen, Sarah. This Lullaby, Just Listen and The Truth About Forever (8)
All comfort rereads, which I should do more of when I’m stressed out.

~ Bourdain, Anthony. Gone Bamboo (7)
Surprisingly good fiction from someone who’s known for their non-fiction. Well-paced, lots of action, and of course, lots of food described.

~ Oats, Joyce Carol. Middle Age: A Romance (6)
This one took me at least three weeks to read, and if I hadn’t felt like I needed to finish this book I probably would have abandoned it after the first few days. I slogged through long, melodramatic passages about self-absorbed, upper-class white people moping about the death of a man they really didn’t know very well. Then about halfway through the book, I asked the person who gave it to me if I was supposed to read this as a genuinely sad story, or if it was a parody. Once we decided that she was probably making fun of these people and their self-absorption, it went a lot faster. My final assessment is that it would make a great book club book, but not for mine [2].

~ Krum, Sharon. The Thing About Jane Spring (4)
The whole time I read this, I wasn’t sure if it was a thinly veiled dig at feminism. At any rate, it was a nice palate-cleanser after the heaviness of the Oats book.

Right now, I’m stuck in the middle of Snow Falling on Cedars. I should’ve held off reading this until I’d read a few more fluffy books because it feels like a reading assignment as opposed to a recreational read. However, since I’m auditioning it for book club I should at least get through it before moving on.

[1] Just one of the many bonuses of working at the library - advanced reader’s copies of upcoming books!
[2] I’m starting a book club at my library, which will commence in the fall, or whenever stuff stops breaking down that needs to be fixed ASAP and I can get the materials together.