Drowning Nor Waving

1) Thus endeth one of the busier months per year at the Dayjob.

2) To celebrate that, saw Broken Social Scene and Superchunk Thursday night with mykwud, who was gracious enough to take the second ticket on short notice (it originally belonged to Dr. My Roommate, but she is unwell at the moment). This'll be a short version of the usual show report, since I didn't write it up that night and since we left during what we thought was the last song and then I found out later they kept playing until 1:45 in the morning. Oops. But anyways.

Sound Academy is sort of redeeming itself as a venue for me, even though they have a constricted, sad beer selection and it's all the way out in the docklands and you have to walk half an hour in the cold through industrial nothingness to get out there if you don't have a car. Usually when I'm at things there they haven't done anything with the back of the room, and it sort of feels like a long deserted hallway. This time, because it was a BSS show, they had a long merch table, Amnesty International, a whole art display/auction thing from a non-profit that runs arts programs for street kids or at-risk kids (and a lot of the art was really, really good) and a video display thing for another one. They were also taking donations for the food bank at the door. Yes, this is a Broken Social Scene show.

I didn't know the opener more than glancingly (Mike did) but it was a really nice, danceable kind of early-nineties alternative set: kind of in the Limblifter/Age of Electric/Treble Charger sort of constellation of things.

Then! There was Broken Social Scene!

(Leah, you ask, didn't you see this band in the summer and write up a whole squeefaced concert report then? Yes. Yes I did. And next time they do a hometown show I will see them again. And the time after that. And the only reason I didn't go to the second date they played at the same venue last night was because my legs were very, very tired from all the dancing I did the night before and I ended up having to eat THIS MUCH protein and crash into bed early and sleep late to feel normal this morning.)

In terms of my Songs I Like bingo card, I got most everything but Major Label Debut (below) and All My Friends, and danced until my legs didn't work (as above). Highlights: original-style version of Almost Crimes, nice long Superconnected, string-and-horn-filled Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl (made me cry in the good way; always does), Sweetest Kill, which is a song I now have a lot more appreciation for, and on the top all-time list, Lover's Spit done just piano and voice by Kevin Drew, with the entire rest of the instrumentation coming in halfway through on the bridge. And the crowd singing most of it. And...oh. :)

It's actually entirely possible they played Major Label Debut later; we had an agreement that when it looked like the last song before the encore, we'd go get the coats, because otherwise you spend an hour in the coat check line. And then we ended up not staying for the encore because we were both hungry and exhausted and wobbly and had to still walk half an hour back to civilization to catch the streetcar, so we staggered back through Scary Industrial Desolate Lakefront Toronto, passing a vitamin water and a bag of Sunchips back and forth, jaywalking indiscriminately, and being ridiculously hyper. Little did I know until the next day that they played until 1:45 in the morning. Yes. You heard that right.

I'm a little miffed about that, but to be fair, I was legitimately tired and out of go and had filled up the concert tank more than adequately. And had to work the next day. I am old, I am old, I will wear my trousers rolled etc. etc. whatever.

Have samples:

This is last night's show, not the Thursday show, but it's the same song and the same venue and you get the idea:

Yes, the crowd sang along on my night too. :)

Oh, here's the one I was at. I'm a little back and to the right there!

...so that was Thursday. :)

3) Back in our everyday lives that aren't actually all about Broken Social Scene, the fantabulous csecooney interviewed me about Ideomancer for the Black Gate blog. It's mostly about this issue and the process of making it, as well as my own personal history with the magazine, but there are some bits about what we look for if you are the sort of person who cares about such things.

4) stillsostrange's second novel, The Bone Palace, came out this week. I picked it up on Thursday and am, so far, about two chapters in. Amanda can write like whoah. You should read it.

5) While I'm in the Amazon links thing, Chilling Tales, the anthology which "Stay" is going to be in, is available for preorder at Amazon. The release date's March 1st otherwise. It has a cover that looks like Nick Cave's bald guy mullet, true, but it contains some of the brighter lights of Canadian horror fiction and will be well worth your time. Apparently there are going to be some events for it when it comes out too, at World Horror Con and around town here. Stay tuned.

6) A new episode of Shadow Unit came out this week too: "Uniform". It is 30,000-plus words of WTF goodness and a bit of stunt-writing besides.

7) My brain's still chewing on that short story I mentioned a bit back. Don't spook it.

8) I am going to the circus tonight. I would say "If I get everything done here, I am going to the circus tonight," but this would fool nobody. I'm going anyways.

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Such is the week that was. And now to send slush, answer e-mail, and go to the circus.

Lone Star Stories #33 is live, a few hours ahead of schedule! It contains poetry from Sonya Taaffe, Samantha Henderson, and Jacqueline West -- two of whom will be appearing in the June Ideomancer, incidentally -- and fiction from Jo Walton and Nina Kiriki Hoffman. And me.

I feel like I keep saying I find myself on TOCs with really cool people and don't know how I got there, but they keep failing to kick me out of the cool parties somehow... 0.o

So! If you wanted to find out what that Shower Angel story I kept giggling about is all about, "Parable of the Shower" is available right behind that link.

(Deposit your tomatoes and/or panties here. Although if you do opt to throw tomatoes, I may just make them into more gazpacho.)