Dash for the Finish Line

On Tuesday, the 12th of April I head out of town for a week of work in the midwest — presentations at the U of Chicago and Chicago Art Institute (hey Chicago friends, yes I’ve been lazy and need to email you!) and then back to Pittsburgh for a set of Friday-Monday defenses.

Until then, it’s the dash for the finish. But this time of year is always a little special.

As is the case with every place I’ve ever worked, there is a point when all of the interesting guest speakers descend on my humble city at once, and I am left with impossible choices between getting my own work done and choosing among a rich menu of cool talks. That day was Thursday, when I had to choose among three talks — Jessica Riskin on automata, Sherry Simon on Montreal as a divided city in the 1960s, and Kathy Peiss on Zoot Suits. It was physically impossible to be in the same place at the same time. I chose Riskin and was happily rewarded. The talk was perfect for me because it was about 50% esoteric material I knew cold, and 50% stuff I’d never heard before. As an added bonus, her thesis was unusually ambitious for this kind of work, which only increased my appreciation of the event. I’m sure the other two were just as good. I bailed on the usual drinks and dinner afterward to hook up with Carrie and a group who’d caught the Simon talk. Since Jenny had a craving for TexMex and Carrie and I always pretty much do, we wound up at Carlos & Pepe’s. I need to preface this by saying that I have extremely low standards for this kind of food. But still, it was a pretty weird scene. They served the sweetest salsa I have ever tasted (okay, I know about fruit salsa, but that wasn’t at all their gig). I guess there’s some truth to the story about the Quebec sweet tooth.

After a series of meetings, one of which I was especially glad to have because I learned i’d screwed up part of my permanent residency application (I figured it would be good to know before sending it off), on Friday afternoon I attended the Montreal at Street Level conference which was simply outstanding, which is no surprise since my friend Johanne Sloan organized it — though you’ll be hard pressed to find her name anywhere on the event website. Thursday’s Simon lecture was the opening of the event. My only regret is that I didn’t see more of it. That was followed by a reception and then a large-group dinner at a Chinatown restaurant whose name escapes me. Their rendition of “Happy Birthday,” however, will not leave my memory any time soon.

You know, there are some people I see at every talk I attend. It’s like they make a life of this. I’m just amazed at how possible that sort of thing is here.

My only question is — how come these things are never spread out over a whole term so you can get a maximally even social and intellectual experience? I mean, if Thursday’s three talks had been at different times, I might have hit them all. . . .

Sponsorship Scandal

As you may know, there is currently a federal investigation into approximately $100 milliion dollars in misspent federal money, which went to ad agencies who basically did nothing for the government. Yesterday’s Globe and Mail had the top headline “Firm Got Cash to Attend NHL Games” reveals that the Canadian government spent $133,000 a year in 1997-8 and 1998-9 for use of corporate boxes at Ottawa’s Corel Centre, plus $27,000 yearly for catering. An Ottawa PR firm then billed them for 3414 hours of work mostly to attend events at the Centre.

Of course I’m used to American government, where this kind of money is routinely misspent in military efforts to topple regimes around the world or to hire PR firms to launch clandestine PR campaigns to try and propagandize the American public (Clinton and both Bush administrations did it). So I’m thrilled to live in a country where people are scandalized by much less, and at greater length. But the scandal really came home for me when I saw what the ad agency people attended:

NHL Hockey Games (well, that’s normal)
Alan Jackson (um, not my taste)
Backstreet Boys (this is getting ooky)
Shania Twain and Neil Diamond (not my demographic but understandable)
and then
Lords of the Dance
a World Wrestling Federation event.

I ask you, citizens, where is the outrage? Lords of the Dance? Lords of the Dance?

Enough said.

McGill Smells

I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean, when you walk in the gates and up the path toward the Art Building, it reeks of putrefaction. Julian, my TA, says that it’s just the melting snow and the grass interacting to give off some kind of nasty gas. He says Parc LaFontaine smells the same way.

I can’t say I’m too too upset. I mean, it would be better if it didn’t smell but since the snow’s melting, I shouldn’t complain.

Today, while we waited for our very lo-fi permanent residency photos to be developed, Carrie bought me a new ring. It should arrive in a couple weeks (of course they don’t have my size in stock). It’s actually a nice ring; shiny, gold and everything. But I figured I might as well since I’ll wear the thing every day (and not remove it in airplane bathrooms). I mean, I spent that kind of money on frames for my glasses, so what’s the point in resisting?

In Praise of Dave Noon and His Blog

I am going to start listing some of my favorite blogs here. Eventually I’ll get around to updating the blogroll, but for now this will have to do.

Some preliminary facts:

I pretty much only read blogs authored by friends. There are a couple exceptions, and I’ll always happily click a link. But I’m the opposite of the person who reads blogs for news or for some kind of alternative, free range culture. I read them because I find real people so much more interesting than fictional characters, even though everyone knows this blogging thing is at least 50% an act anyway — even (or especially) in its most confessional moments. So basically, I’m going to start introducing you to my friends who blog.

Exhibit A is Dave Noon, assistant professor of History at U of Alaska Fairbanks and all around supergenius. I met Dave online in like 1994 or something when he showed up on the now-defunct Bad Subjects listserv. He’d started grad school at the U of Minnesota right after I left for Illinois and we had friends in common. Next time I visited Minneapolis, we got together and that was that. Dave has a twisted sense of humor and a keep political sensibility. He is also one of the most unique writers I have ever encountered. You will notice his self-deprecating comments about drive and determination in his comments on my last post below. Do not be fooled. His blog is a work of great elegance and copiousness. And he’s had it in him for a long time. At one point, I requested and received the “Dave Noon collection” of bizarre email correspondences he’d had over the years. It was a literary masterpiece and I am hopeful he will post them one day on his blog.

Visit Axis of Evil Knievel at http://axisofevelknievel.blogspot.com/.

On deck for praise: Gone Feral.

The Best Advice Ever + a Music Gear Fish Story

As she was leaving the Art building on Thursday, our colleague Marc Raboy told Carrie to “take some time off, it’s a holiday weekend, you know.”

Sometimes, that’s all you need. We took yesterday off and had the luxury of sitting around and talking forever, and then going shopping around town. We started with Zone on St. Denis which was not as cool as we’d hoped. We then wandered down to cluster of vintage and furniture stores on Amherst, south of Ontario. They were amazing. Like museums of 60s and 70s fashion and design. Some of the stuff was quite beautiful and some of it was just plain weird, like the “videospheres” that looked like astronaut helmets. Unfortunately, they were all super overpriced. $55 for a rotary phone. Sorry! There’s tons of stores down there, though, so we got to explore a bit and walk around since it was so nice out. (NB non-locals: I could still see my breath).

The next stop was Henri-Henri, Canada’s largest men’s hat store! I’ve been wanting to go for months now and I was thrilled to get there. It’s pretty cool and I did score three hats for my oversized head (please check jokes at my expense at the door), but couldn’t quite bite for the $400 beaver felt one if though it fit just right and looked beautiful. It’s Canada. Beaver are a resource, you know.

Speaking of expensive things, on the way back, we stopped in at a Pawn Shop. As a home studio engineer and bassist, I always stick my head in pawn shops in case they have any cool old equipment or better yet have something good but don’t quite “know what they have.” As luck would have it, they had a device called the SWR Interstellar Overdrive (no relation to the Pink Floyd song), which is like a very low-wattage tube amplifier or a very complex and rich sounding distortion processor for bass, depending on how you look at it. it’s a rare, fancy and lovely sounding device. List on them new is something like $750 (US) and they routinely go for $350 (US) or so used on ebay. Between my broken French and his broken English, I managed to talk the guy down from $500 to $250 (Canadian) but I still wasn’t sure since I couldn’t test the thing out in the store. Today, I decided to go back and get the thing if the tubes lit up when I turned it on, since even if it’s broken at the price, I’d still break even if I had it fixed. And if it wasn’t broken, I would have the pawn shop score of a lifetime. Alas, the guy’s boss was there today. He was still about to sell it to me for $250 Canadian when his boss came over and said “no.” Their price today was $500 used, which is no bargain at all. I thanked them (in broken French) and left.

That’s the equivalent of a fish story for musicians. That Interstellar Overdrive is definitely the one that got away. If I’d just taken the plunge last night, I’d have the thing, AND the bragging rights to go with it.

At least when I saw the giant oversized stuffed cat-in-the-hat at a garage sale in Pittsburgh a few years ago for $5 (US, but like it matters!), I bought it. I’ve learned my lesson.

Yesterday concluded with a great home-cooked dinner and a bad movie on TV (Mr. 3000). I awoke this morning feeling rested and wrote four half-decent pages.

31 July 2007

Our new work permits arrived today and that is the day that they expire. I consider it a minor miracle that we got more that a year’s renewal (which is the normal amount of time) and that they came back this fast. By 31 July 2007, if all goes well, we will have found the holy grail of permanent residency.