Thursday, February 24, 2011

A Little Oral Magic - Victoria's First Spoken Word Festival

The very first Victoria Spoken Word Festival is happening this weekend, from Thursday to Saturday.  I'll be in attendance covering the event for the University of Victoria's radio station, CFUV.  Click the links below for my take on the proceedings as well as event information.  Tickets are cheap, so come out and hear some spoken word and performance poetry.

Make sure you click the various links when reading the posts.  There's gold in them there hills.

Post 1:  The Festival is Almost Upon Us - Getting to Know Your Spoken Word Festival

Post 2:  Mood Lighting & Revelations - The opening night party at The Mint

Post 3:  The Big Night / In Fact It's Cold as Hell - Away we go...

Post 4:  Tongues of Fire, Part I - Coffee shops, Ryefield Ford & a motel made out of backpacks

Post 5:  More Tongue - Tongues of Fire, Part II - Smashing watermelons, Prufrock & the Sasquatch

Post 6:  Awesome Shit Showcase, Part I - Ryefield Ford, Jai'aquarian & Definitely Not Jamiroquai

Post 7:  More Awesome Shit - Nat Spadez, Jeremy Loveday & Bear ALWAYS Wins

Post 8: All Good Things, Part I - R.C Weslowski takes us to Skullfucker Canyon

Post 9: All Good Things, Part II - On the Edge Showcase, looking to the future

Monday, February 21, 2011

Why You're Still Single (For the Ladies)

Love can be as austere and permanent as the spaces between stars or as beautiful and short-lived as the promises made between children. From within, love can seem as easy as breathing and from without, as impenetrable as Dutch math - entire industries have sprung up around helping the lovelorn unravel the mysteries of the tender trap.  I have decided to use my unique position as restaurant reviewer, humorist, philosopher and the final word in masculinity to help bridge the gulf between lovers and the loveless.  

What follows is the Largely the Truth Guide to Why You’re Still Single (For the Ladies)

Monday, February 14, 2011

Spirit in the Sky - Earthquakes, God & the One Who Got Away

I miss God.  Not in that aching, “We used to ride bikes every day until her parents moved back to Waukegan and the next time I saw her she was grinding onstage at a bar in The Dalles with singles tucked into her underpants” kind of way, no.  I miss the sense of scale that the idea of God brought to the world, and the Old Testament sabre-rattling that used to keep in line a people which comedian Lewis Black once described as “ten hairs away from being baboons.”

When I was younger and rounder my very Catholic grandmother decided that I needed to be placed in Catechism so as to begin honing my sense of guilt.  For the uninitiated, Catechism is Catholic religious school, usually held on sunny weekends so as to prepare you for a lifetime of the church ruining things you enjoy.