Author: Peter

Preferences

Per Donna:

  1. Long hair or Short hair: short (male), long (female)
  2. Contacts or Glasses: a little from column A, a little from column B
  3. Spring or Autumn: spring
  4. Mittens or Gloves: gloves
  5. Car or Truck/SUV: car
  6. Mac or Windows: none of the above
  7. Cats or Dogs: dogs
  8. Rock or Jazz: jazz
  9. Pen or Pencil: pen (particularly for crosswords)
  10. DVD or VHS: DVD

nia to close

nia @ C’est What is being forced to close. The last show at this great little venue will be Saturday August 21.

This is horrible news. I’ve had such a fantastic time there over the last several years: I rediscovered Lenni Jabour there just over three years ago, and through her regular shows at nia I learned of amazing artists like Claire Jenkins, Angie Nussey, tapdanceuse Paula Skimin, and bassist extraordinaire Andrew Downing to name but a few. Emm Gryner, from whom I received the bad news, is performing at nia on Friday in what may be my final show at the place where I played my first show in Toronto ever, in August 1995.

Lenni will be performing her final C’est What show on July 21, with special guest Justin Rutledge.

Visit C’est What’s Save Live Music page and see what (little, it would unfortunately appear) you can do.

Ray Charles, 1930-2004

…the greater tragedy of his passing is that it lies in the shadow of another demise; and not one one-billionth the angst and sorrow and sense of loss will be felt or expended as it has torrentially been in the mawkish tide of phony patriotism expended elsewhere.

PJ for PM!

Apparently, showing the maximum amount of forehead is considered good…. Perhaps that’s the reasoning here. If so, Jack Layton shouldn’t just be prime minister–he should be Emperor of the Known Galaxy.

Claire and Allison

Claire Jenkins and Allison Brown are in town tomorrow and Sunday. I don’t see info on any of the shows on Claire’s site, so I’ll highlight the three London ones: tomorrow morning (early!) at Covent Garden Market on CFPL-TV’s New Day, tomorrow evening at the new London Music Club, and Sunday afternoon at The Ugly Mug. Both ladies are worth the effort to hear, so come out and listen!

Conservatives 0

I just received a call from one of the worst telephone representatives for a political candidate I’ve ever heard. Not only did he speak quickly and mumble–even after I pointed out the fact that he was doing so–he wouldn’t say anything about the candidate’s policies when I asked him directly in response to one of his inflammatory rhetorical questions. When he requested my e-mail address (ostensibly to send campaign literature, although I’m hardly naive enough to believe it wouldn’t soon be overflowing with propaganda from the leader and the interest groups that fund the campaign) I instead asked him if I could visit the candidate’s or the party’s website; he was either unable or unwilling to provide the information, and instead gave me an 800 number to call.

Did I mention the candidate’s name? No? Funny, the caller hardly did either, preferring instead to rail on against the federal Liberals. What galls me even more is that, through the wonder of caller ID, I saw that the call was placed from the 416 area code, i.e. Toronto, which means the candidate’s team didn’t even hire local people to do his electioneering.

I don’t know who I will ultimately support in this election, but I’m absolutely certain now of who I won’t. Tim Gatten, you’ve lost any possibility of receiving my vote through your staff’s ineptitude, your lack of constructive policies and ideas, as represented by the script given to this phone monkey and the rhetoric spouted by your party’s leader, and your obvious lack of loyalty to your own community. I’m taking the advice given in your own campaign slogan: I demand better.

Choice editor

[The] vi commands are so ingrained that if someone asks me how to do something in ‘vi’ I can’t tell them. I have to actually do it and watch what I do and then tell them.

Frazz

I’m not sure how I missed finding it until now, but in the last couple of hours I’ve become a huge fan of Jef Mallett’s Frazz. It’s more than a little similar to Bill Watterson’s late, lamented Calvin and Hobbes, to the point where there are conspiracy theorists that think Mallett and Watterson are the same person. (They’re not… or is that just what they want you to think?)

There don’t appear to be any Frazz collections available or in the works, so for now there’s only a month’s worth of previous strips to peruse. Still, it’s 30 days of one of the better comic strips available today, and one I hope stays around for a long time.

Mallett and Frazz are both into triathlon competition. John informs me that We Tri-Deads dig Frazz.