May 15-16, 2012 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Just like the title says. I did work all day yesterday, and the most part of today too. At this point, we're looking at definitely negative words -- I've sliced something like 2,000 or more, and added...okay, who even knows? It's all just a ball o' confusion over here.

Book proposals. It's a thing. Another skill to learn.

If I couldn't actively feel the thing getting better with each pass, each iteration? I'd probably be going out of my skin.

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Otherwise? All work and no play makes Leah a dull girl. I did not go to a food security lecture today, and I am not going to that noon yoga class tomorrow, mostly because I want this finished by tomorrow evening, when I am most definitely going to one of the many spinoffs of the Trampoline Hall pub lecture/storytelling thing, because one of Dr. My Roommate's colleagues is giving a talk on Erdos.

Time not spent writing the past few days has been spent running errands or cooking food. Time spent not doing those things has been spent curled up in bed with my laptop, watching Samurai Champloo episodes, in an attempt to cool my brain off. All very boring.

The one unboring thing? Ideomancer has made the longlist for the British Fantasy Awards this year. Yeah, it's the longlist, not the shortlist. Yeah, it's a small thing. But we're a volunteer-staffed webzine that pays all of $40 a story, and inside? I am dying with pride. :)

So I'm back from the first tour show Soundgarden's played since 1997.

No. For reals.

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This was kind of an impromptu thing. Last week sometime, my friend Danny (who I think has no LJ) and I were at our new best patio, talking 'bout stuff and having gin, and I said, "Hey, there's Soundgarden next week. We should go to Soundgarden."

He did not know there was Soundgarden, and is a huge, super, ultra fan. So this thing I said in idleness turned into a thing we were doing or else. And so this morning I rolled out of bed and got some online tickets for Soundgarden.

We actually went down on time for once -- Molson Amphitheatre is apparently sincere when they say a show starts at 7:30. So got some dinner, took the streetcar to the venue, and got in just as Coheed & Cambria were starting the opening set.


I really need to fix the autofocus on this damn camera. In any case, stage, Coheed, heads.

I was curious about this, because I have some friends who really, really like Coheed, and they are generally not people of poor taste. The live show was very metal. And unfortunately, I have been known to sometimes find metal kind of melodramatic and silly, what with its whole and now I will not only have a guitar, but two guitars stacked on top of each other! And I will play this excessively complicated guitar solo on it! And I will do that with the guitar being balanced on my head! (No, I am not kidding. That happened.)

We decided it was kind of Linkin Park meets the Deftones meets a few Wheel of Time novels, and probably more fun if you're into the story. Also that I may be unkindly prejudiced against metal bands.*

They played a lot of Mark Lanegan during the break -- solo stuff and Screaming Trees stuff. And that put me in a good mood.

And then there was Soundgarden.


Same deal; pretend you can see a Soundgarden there.

We had lawn tickets, which means you don't get seats and it's catch as catch can -- and sometimes means you're watching other people watch a show -- but which also means you have the requisite space to dance your face off. And we did that. We did that a lot.

Chris Cornell's voice still sounds the same, even after years and years. They played, well, pretty much old stuff: Black Rain, Spoonman, Rusty Cage, Blow Up the Outside World, Let Me Drown, My Wave, Fell on Black Days, Burden in My Hand, Superunkown, Black Hole Sun, Fourth of July to finish the set. The encore was...two songs I'm not sure of and Like Suicide between them. He did not take his shirt off. Which was sad.

We headbanged and danced ourselves a little hole in the crowd and shouted lyrics back at the stage, and then other people were also dancing there too, and the people next to us were headbanging, and it got muggier and windier throughout the set, and then by the time they started Black Hole Sun there was lightning all over the sky and it started to pour. And we went "Umbrellas? Nah!" and kept going through it, and it was...kind of glorious. :) Every time a new fork of lightning came through the sky, everyone cheered. Apparently this was actually a severe thunderstorm warning. Oops. :)

It didn't rain all that long, but the lightning kept up the whole set -- this weird double light show which got more and more amazing as it went -- and by the end of it we were hoarse and warm and grinning and soaked and exhausted, and it was so, so very good. One of the best shows I've seen in ages. Just...amazing.

We walked through the (again) rain until we found Bathurst again, and straggled into a pub like the drowned rats we were for restorative beer and nachos, and then made our disparate ways home through the city. I ended up walking, even though it meant another 30-40 minutes on my feet and not getting in until past 1:00 am. The city's all humid and cool, and it smelled terrifically like roses and honey tonight.

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As a side note, re: last night's what is wrong with people discussion, tonight was the total polar opposite in mood of yesterday's show. Just as much drinking, from what I can judge less drugs (it does make a difference when they're patting you down at the gate for contraband, and it does make a difference that yesterday was all ages, and tonight was decidedly not). But tonight? People were awesome. They high-fived you between songs. Nobody got in your dance space, and everyone was really courteous about spacing ourselves out so everyone had dance space. No throwing shit at people, or other sorts of general fuckery.

The four people next to us were chatting with us between stuff, and high-fiving, and dancing kind of in a clump. In retrospect, the six of us, and then a couple more by the end, were rowdy as all hell; they were probably kinda drunk, and we don't have to be.** And near the end, one of the girls -- it was two couples, I think? -- gave us both this big two-armed hug and said something to the effect of, "I totally don't know you guys, but you're awesome, and it's so cool that we got to experience this together."

...and that is what I mean about good crowds and bad crowds and what's my scene and what isn't. Nights where there is crazy loud rock and my naked toes in the grass and pouring rain on my face and lightning in the sky, and hugging complete strangers because we got to stand together in that, regardless of whether we'll ever run into each other again? That's my scene. That's what's mine.

That is what I mean when I say summer shows.

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And now: I did not mean to do two big shows, two days in a row. And I am very tired, and going to bed. :)

*We spent the time between sets naming off metal bands to see if we thought they were silly or not, and thus diagnose or refute this whole prejudice thing.

**'Cause that's how we roll. All trouble, all the time, dead sober.

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.

Leah, where have you been for the last 48 hours? Well, Internet, I'm glad you asked. It's NXNE, and I have been Seeing Bands.



After Aurora's goodbye party at bakkaphoenix on Friday (it was her last shift, and she's worked there seven years) I headed over to Dundas Square for the free Sloan show. Sloan! The TTC was irrevocably messed up, and I missed probably half the set, but the half I did catch had songs I knew and liked in it, so I could bop around a bit and sing the set back to the band. Got...I think Believe in Me, The Other Man, Money City Maniacs, Coax Me, some other stuff I can't remember before and around those.

I'm not sure how I feel about Dundas Square as a concert venue. It's a little too distributed; it bleeds into the street, and there are still the billboards and ads and stuff getting in the way of things. I can't quite get the feel of a room there, and it's hard to get into things.

On the other hand, yesterday's proceedings?



Olympic Island is a perfect concert venue.

Okay, you do have to get across on the ferry. And the ferry was packed. And as we all know, the island is another nation unto itself, because that's the only way to explain how expensive a beer is ten minutes across the lake. But oh man, perfect day. Incredible day.

The stage setup is festival-style: a nice big grassy field you can congregate in to dance in front of the stage, as well as nice big shady trees off to the side where you can just sit between sets -- or sit through sets if you're so inclined -- and veg and chat. And since the island doesn't do regular concerts, they don't have a regular promoter, so the food available wasn't the usual Pizza Pizza and crappy beer: it was local restaurants with booths like you get at the literary festivals. Dinner was spendy, but it was also this awesome veggie burger on a real-bakery whole grain bun, with miso and fresh veggies and a cob of roasted corn. Nom. And you could see clear across to the city, and everything smelled like lake water and cut grass and sunshine, and the mood of the whole thing was just so very happy and chilled out and friendly. I looked up in the middle of the BSS set at the setting sun, and light was just spiraling through the clouds.

Did I mention it's a perfect concert venue?

I didn't get over there until about 4pm, since it was pouring earlier in the afternoon (successfully waited that out) and I took some time to get myself together to go. I ended up not actually taking the Centre Island ferry but the Ward's one -- for non-Toronto types, there are three ferry docks on the island -- and walking in, which was hot. And nice. And hot. This means I missed the Toronto Revue and Timber Timbre, which kind of sucked since I'd wanted to catch The Beauties, but eh. They're local. I can do this another time.

Lindsey and our third person (friend of hers) weren't scheduled to show up until just before the Broken Social Scene set, so I had a few hours to kill. Serendipitously, I ran into my friend Mike, who you may remember from previous concertgoing reports, and several of his friends, and ended up hanging out with them.

Danced through the Beach House set, and then sat in the shade eating dinner and chatting through the Band of Horses set (and they play a really good set, I was just hungry). And then more people showed up and Broken Social Scene, who is who we came to see, was on. So we went and elbowed into the crowd and danced some more:



That is about the only picture I got. I was busy with the music thing.

I've never seen Broken Social Scene live before, but I get the feeling it was a pretty typical set for them. They brought out all kinds of people who used to be more regularly associated with the whole project, like Leslie Feist and Emily Haines, which, okay, I admit made me squee a bit. I got about 50% of my "please play this!" list: they did Lover's Spit and Fire Eye'd Boy and Cause = Time and Almost Crimes (yaaay), but no Backyards or Her Disappearing Theme or others.

A lot of people left before the Pavement set, including a bunch of the people we were with, so a couple of us stuck it out, found a good spot, and finished it off. Pavement's funny; one of those bands I remember from around the edges of the stuff I used to listen to in high school. I recognized a lot of songs in there, but I couldn't name you a setlist for my life. Also, well, I was probably a little dehydrated and exerted out and whee! at that point anyway.

We managed to get onto the second ferry back, and I went home across the lake, under the stars with wind in my hair, feeling kind of icky with sweat and sunscreen, insanely thirsty, reeking of secondhand smoke of several varieties, legs aching so much I couldn't keep balance, and totally, absolutely, completely happy.

That is how a festival concert is supposed to be, my people.

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The result of this is that I was way too tired and achy this afternoon to go see Spookey Ruben (blast), and so that is the end of the Weekend Where I Watch All The Music.

Next year, I'm going into training or something before NXNE. And I'm doing it with a plan. But either way? Squee. :)

So I have these awesome socks. They're black and white and blue and lavender and stripey, in a kind of understated and yet still whee! kind of way, and I only wear them for awesome days when I need luck or skill or extra awesome so as to conserve their superpowers. 'Cause they make me feel cool, and you can't really overstate the power of that.

Today I had a brunch date with a friend I haven't seen in something like 12 years (who I ran into completely randomly at Worldcon of all places, and we thus made plans to get together now that her thesis is written), and I reached for my awesome socks, and then went, "Self, does this day, which is fairly laid-back and contains no expectations upon your person, really merit awesome socks?" And then I figured eh, screw it, I want to be awesome today. Just 'cause.

Socks win again.

Brunch was awesome, and friend and I probably get along even better as grownups than we did at 15 or thereabouts, which is really neat and smiley and cool. And since it was a lovely sunny crisp fall day and I was already on Spadina, after brunch I walked down to the bookstore for Violette Malan's signing and hung out for an hour or two. Picked up both The Windup Girl and Octavia Butler's Fledgling while there. And then I wasn't finding myself quite ready to go home, so I tucked into Tequila Bookworm, got an avocado-asiago-walnuts-stuff salad and some fresh lemonade, and knitted in the sunshine until I ran out of sunshine.

Best thing? I have all week to do stuff like this. Because I'm on vacation this week.

Hee.

And now I'm home and still a little peckish, and there's hockey on, so I think I'll turn that up and fix a pot of soup or somesuch and just roll in my awesome day a little bit longer...

1) My steamer is whistling creepily and tunelessly at me, like a serial killer. I seriously could have sworn Eugene Tooms was hanging out in my kitchen vent, it sounded so lifelike. If I don't show up tomorrow, you'll all know why.

2) As you may or may not know, Toronto is currently in the second day of a garbage strike. I am relatively sanguine about this -- after all, Windsor's ten weeks into one, so really, two days doesn't hurt me, and the last time they did this, in 2002, I coped just fine, thank you -- but I have discovered that people tearing their hair out over this wakes up my inner smug asshole just a little. People! I say to them, in the privacy of my own head. If you were practising proper waste diversion then what to do with your garbage wouldn't be an issue for like, two weeks or more! There would be no reason to panic like idiots two days in. In fact, right now is a very good time to learn proper waste diversion practices and discover the mad joy of throwing out nothing but the plasticky stuff they wrap things in for no good reason!

See? My inner smug asshole, she is wide awake. I figure even if I have to store some stuff on the balcony -- and granting that I'm a single-writer household -- I'm good for like a month. I am feeling so inappropriately self-righteous about this you'd think I'd just read Atlas Shrugged with one eye and Fast Food Nation with the other.

(Compost on, my friends. Compost on.)

3) On a much nicer note, rejoice with me, for I have found a local organic delivery/farm share thing! No longer will I have to be sadly, mewlingly jealous of rushthatspeaks's farm share box posts, and this will probably keep me off the street out of the work cafeteria too, which can only be good. And there's blueberries.

Going to sign up tomorrow. Yay!