Category: Me

"It's the ciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiircle of liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife!"

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In three days I’ll fly to Halifax (again…I was just there less than two weeks ago) to attend the final intensive week of my MBA and write my final exam. I’m excited about this, for reasons beyond the obvious…the obvious being that I really, really, pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top want to be done this fucker.

Ahem…like I said: beyond that. Even though I’ve lived in Toronto for eleven years now, I still very much think of Halifax as another home. A different kind of home than the family farm, which is two hours northwest of Halifax, but home nonetheless. I spent four years at university there, where I met my wife. I visited Halifax with my family several times as a kid and have visited many times since I moved away. I was married in Halifax. I have good friends there. Some of my favourite places are there: the Public Gardens, the Daily Grind, the bottom of a glass of Granite Brewery Special Best Bitter. If there’s such a thing as a spiritual home, I think Halifax is probably it. If I love the farm for feeling familiar and comfortable, I love Halifax equally for being liberating. Not liberating from the farm or my family, but liberating from the nearby town where I went to high school and the life I was afraid I’d slip into there.

I’m glad I’ll get to enjoy next week with new friends, good friends. It’ll be fun to be one of the two people who’ve lived there and show the tourists around and explain what a donair is. It’ll be fun being on campus, even if it’ll be quiet during the summer. I think it’ll feel like closing a circle too, righting a small wrong. I’ve never felt like I wasted my university education; in fact I think I’ve done fairly well by it. However, I look back (as most people probably do) and shudder at the weakness my work ethic in those years, and regret the sloppiness of my first two most especially. I’ve been lucky enough to learn some of the stuff I, quite frankly, probably should have learned (or remembered) from my first go-round at business school. Not many people get a second crack at that.

How lucky, then, that I get to wrap it all up in the city where it started. Where everything started.

[tags]halifax, dalhousie, public gardens, daily grind, granite brewery[/tags]

Still waiting for Quiet Riot revisted

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I’ve tried before to articulate why I don’t tend to like artists who rehash old musical styles. Not that I don’t like a lot of old musical styles, but I’m rarely even impressed by someone who revisits an old style that I loved, let alone one I disliked. Like I said, though, I could never explain clearly when someone would ask me why I didn’t just love The Darkness or The Kaiser Chiefs or whoever.

So today, when I read Carrie Brownstein’s Monitor Mix blog, I found myself nodding along with her explanation for why she feels the same way.

I like new. I like influence drawn from various or, sometimes, obvious genres. I am not averse to updating or reconfiguring the old. But if an artist can’t find a way of making the music feel like it’s been reborn then what is the point? There are plenty of bands that make you feel like you are hearing a genre, a form of music, or a playing style for the first time. In my opinion, The White Stripes are a good example of a band who did more than merely copy the blues, whereas The Bravery exemplify the most benign and pointless regurgitation of new wave and post-punk.

I feel I should point out that I enjoy cover songs. A lot. I quite enjoy established artists taking a crack at an old song, especially if they mess with it a bit. However, artists like the new-wave of female British soul singers that Carrie mentions just seem like poor sequels, the same way that Wolfmother sounds like a local house band trying to be Zeppelin.

Clearly lots of people like Amy Winehouse and The Bravery, etc. I’d have to assume they’re the kind of people who like their music fun instead of interesting, which is fine…different people want different things from music. I’m just glad I found a way to articulate why I don’t want to listen to the retro-act-du-jour. I suppose it was a little inelegant to respond to “Why don’t you like Scissor Sisters?” with “Because I fucking hated disco the first time around, and I wasn’t even there.”

[tags]carrie brownstein, monitor mix[/tags]

They could have also used "nuclear meltdown"

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Today I bought this tshirt from Threadless because a) it’s funny; b) I bought one for my brother for Christmas and I very nearly kept it for myself; and c) it was $10.

Nellie went the slightly maudlin route and picked the shirt of the polar bear drifting unhappily without an ice floe.

And so my tshirt addiction continues unabated. However, if the weather for the past three days is any indication of what this summer will be like, I will need all the clean tshirts I can freaking get. Today my plastic headphones melted into little puddles of melody in my ears.

[tags]threadless, haiku[/tags]

News flash: area introvert craves more emotional attachment

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While I sat at Fran’s eating breakfast I read a few pages of Catherine Gildener‘s Too Close To The Falls. After a few pages a woman, maybe a few years younger than me, who’d been sitting across from me with (I assume) her boyfriend/husband, came over to my table. She told me she’d read the book and loved it, but had never seen anyone else reading it before. I told her I couldn’t take credit for unearthing the obscure find, that it had been recommended by my writing instructor Michelle Berry years before (who I believe had reviewed it for the Globe) and after keeping it on my shelf for six winters I was finally getting around to it. We talked about the fantastic stories Gildener told of her childhood, and wondered how such tales could be real. She apologized for interrupting my breakfast, told me she hoped I would enjoy the rest of the book as much she did, and went back to her table.

This, to me, is the real benefit of the paper book. I see no advantage to the convenience of the medium, compared to an e-book or reading online, but what I’ve found is that people will often come over and talk to me about a book, because they see it as a shared emotional experience. Normally, as an introvert, strange people striking up conversations with me is akin to getting mugged, but in these cases the conversation is about the book, not about me or them, so I don’t mind.

In fact, I wish there was an equivalent for music. Each day on my way to and from work I see hundreds of people with headphones snaking out of their bags and pockets and I wonder what they’re listening to. I assume they’re all listening to the same formulaic, familiar music that infects radio and most iPods, but what about the exceptions? For every Rainer Maria Rilke you spot in a sea of John Grisham and Deepak Chopra there must be a similar musical outsider. How great would it be to see that the baby boomer in a golf shirt is listening to the new Frightened Rabbit? Or that the punk girl carrying a skateboard is listening to Blind Willie Johnson? Or that the accountant with the CostCo briefcase is listening to T-Rex? I feel like every day I’m missing a dozen shared emotional experiences contained in pairs of headphone wires.

[tags]catherine gildener, michelle berry, rainer maria rilke, frightened rabbit, blind willie johnson, t-rex[/tags]

"Take your life, give it a shake"

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I cannot stop listening to “Floating In The Forth” by Frightened Rabbit. It’s just the kind of lovely, warming song (odd, because it’s kind of about suicide) that makes me want to cry and smile and quit my job and sell everything I own and lie in a field with headphones and sun and listen to it over and over and over again.

I know, because of the way I consume music, that by next week I’ll have moved on to something else. But I’ll come back. And, right now, it’s perfect.

[tags]frightened rabbit, floating in the forth[/tags]

Multiple choice

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Earlier today Dan bought a pink Hugo Boss dress shirt. Dan is:

  1. branching out and trying new things;
  2. simply rounding out a shirt rotation for his suits;
  3. gay;
  4. umm…I think a and c may be the same thing;
  5. all of the above.

Earlier today Dan also bought a brown Hugo Boss dress shirt. Dan is:

  1. branching out and trying new things (though slightly less new than that pink business);
  2. simply rounding out a shirt rotation for his suits;
  3. a German fascist;
  4. by pairing a brown shirt with a brown suit and brown shoes, in danger of looking like Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo;
  5. none of the above.

[tags]hugo boss, dress shirt[/tags]

Buried under a fucking snowbank, that's where

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Spring has sprung
grass has ris
I wonder where
the birdies is?

Dear rotation + trajectory of earth: we would like spring now please. Kthxbye.

.:.

The second-quickest way to invite my scorn? Be a telemarketer and call at dinner time. The quickest way to invite my scorn? Be a telemarketer, call at dinner and try to sell me a subscription to the Toronto Sun. For bonus scorn, argue with me when I say no.

.:.

The new Silver Mt. Zion (etc., etc.) album garnered an A- from the Onion AV Club. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but I just assume I’ll love it. Maybe I’ll take the same approach that I did with Horses In The Sky: buy it, put it on my Zen, forget about it, and then nearly have a stroke six months later when I hear a song like “Teddy Roosevelt’s Guns” for the first time.

.:.

One of these arrived in the mail last week. I bought this one from Threadless last week. Now I’m tempted to buy this. I need help.

[tags]ogden nash, telemarketers, toronto sun, silver mt zion, threadless, tshirts[/tags]

Today

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Today is St. Patrick’s Day. I do not care about this so much since I’m about as Irish as pineapple, and my tolerance for drinking cheap draft in crowded bars is pretty much down to nil. However, a shocking number of people (many of whom I know for a fact are not Irish in any way, shape or form) are wearing green today, so maybe this is a bigger deal than I thought. Having grown up in a place named New Scotland, in a non-drinking family, the importance of March 17 may have been lost on me.

Today I am 89% of the way through my MBA. I have 157 days left. If the entire program were put on the timeline of a single day, it would be about 9:22 PM. I am officially phoning it in at this point.

Today my brother is in town again. He was here just last weekend; I guess he really missed the place. Anyway, we had a bite and a couple of pints at Smokeless Joe last night (I believe we have now taken pretty much everyone we know there) and he’s off to meetings today and tomorrow. Soon he’ll know the city better than we do.

Today’s it’s cold again, which is deflating after the semi-warm day we had on Saturday. Supposed to be above freezing & rainy tomorrow and Wednesday, which bodes well for removing some snow.

Today I’d like to be working for VanCity, like my friend* William Azaroff.  He got to meet Muhummad Yunus and he does some cool stuff at work.

Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you. By now you should’ve somehow realized what you gotta do. I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now.

* It feels odd to call him that, since I’ve never met him in person, but rather have communicated only a few times over email and phone. Still, blogs & Facebook & Twitter give a strange sense of familiarity. Hmmmm…there’s a whole other blog post simmering there…

[tags]st. patrick’s day, mba, smokeless joe, toronto weather, william azaroff, vancity, muhummad yunus, oasis, wonderwall[/tags]

"Don't just sit there and decompose. Go throw on some summer clothes."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I love spring. It is, by far, my favourite time of the year. Some of that has to do with the association of spring with maple season (truly one of the best times to live on a maple-producing farm), but mainly it’s the promise of those first few days when it’s so warm, you can go outside without a coat. Just thinking about it makes me all tingly.

March 20 is, of course, the first day of spring. As chance would have it, this year March 20 also happens to be the kickoff of March Madness, surely another of my favourite days of the year. If it’s sunny and semi-warm and I get to watch 16 college basketball games in 12 hours, I may just go into happy overdose. Stay tuned.

[tags]first day of spring, march madness[/tags]

"Such a beer does not exist, sir."

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Links of the day:

  • One more reason to love Nicholas Hoare: this sign in their door. If you like books at all and live in Toronto (or Ottawa or Montreal), I suggest you visit. It’s like God’s living room.
  • Much like a special candy-covered doughnut that Homer Simpson asked for, Dunkin’ Donuts is introducing an M&M-covered doughnut. I anxiously await the arrival of Skittlebrau.

.:.

You know who I find annoying? Not specific people (’cause you wouldn’t know them), but types of people who exhibit like behaviour? Well, let me tell you:

  1. Smokers. No offense to any smokers who may be reading this, but you’re assholes. All of you.  You’re not assholes because you stink or because you slowly kill yourself or because you look ridiculous; that’s your choice. No, you’re assholes because you blow smoke in my face as you walk down the street in front of me, and because you throw thousands of butts on the ground every year as if the world is your personal fucking ashtray.
  2. The tragic and desperate souls who drive down Yonge Street (or any other busy street) with the windows down and the mondo-nuclear-subwoofer bass on 11. It fills my heart with sadness that your need for attention is so bottomless and unfulfilled that you’re forced to spend thousands of dollars on a stereo for no other purpose than to get strangers to turn their heads in your direction for maybe two seconds.
  3. People who play politics in the workplace. Office politics is the last refuge of the dull and incompetent. I don’t mind smart, capable people who understand politics, but when you make a career solely out of figuring out how to cover your ass next week, you’ll have to admit to yourself that you’ll never get another ounce of respect from anyone other than fellow political weasels. The rest of us see right through you, and know that you’ll get yours in the end.
  4. Pedestrians/shoppers/drivers who have no idea what’s going on around them. We’ve all seen them. The person who stands on the escalator in just the exact spot that makes it impossible to pass them. The friends ambling down the sidewalk side-by-side so that no one can pass in either direction. The driver who tries to turn on a red light, unaware that they’ve blocked pedestrians trying to cross. Sometimes I think this is rudeness, but more often than not I think it’s just that people are oblivious. They can’t process two thoughts at once. It doesn’t occur to them that at least one other of the 6.2 billion of us could be on the same escalator, the same sidewalk, the same street. How do these people not get eaten by wolves or accidentally drink PineSol?
  5. People who answer their phones during a movie. Phones ringing in a theatre don’t bug me; it doesn’t happen often and when it does it’s usually just forgetfulness, and the culprit is almost always apologetic. But occasionally you get some asshat who lets it ring a few times while he digs it out, lets it ring again while he checks the caller ID, and then answers the frigging thing. I once threw a handful of M&Ms at a kid who answered his phone, thinking he was a badass. Struck by candy, he turned around to find an audience whispering threats and plotting his death. He hung up.

Whew, that felt good. I’m not sure what possessed me to write that; I had a pretty good day. My cold is nearly gone, I got a lot done at work, I’m watchin’ hockey, I’m planning trips and visits…all is well, more or less. Maybe I just felt like making a list.

[tags]nicholas hoare, dunkin’ donuts, skittlebrau, smokers, office politics[/tags]