Just in case thee are a few people out there slower on the uptake than me, via CBC’s DNTO, the 365 Days Project has a few weeks to go during which a new wacko song a day is added. I woke up from my mid-day Saturday snooze to William Shatner singing croaking “Rocket Man”.
Author: Alan
Chairs
The Seven Chairs: The Fifth One Ended Up in France
Mella told Daniel that Harris is like Sam.
Go to Switching to Glide a music blog for Canada.
My new side blog – whatever will I do with it? Thanks Steve.
Arctic Photos of the 1800’s
This was on MetaFilter just now: a University of Toronto’s massive collection of Arctic records, including photos, from the late 1800’s.
Christmas Recital
It didn’t totally suck. Sitting in a suburban Baptist church
for an hour and a half listening to 43 kids pick out something on the piano and
bang the tamborine is not necessarily the way I want to spend a Saturday
afternoon – especially when there is college football to watch and forget about
two minutes later. I hope the parents whose kids just don’t have the mojo
know it. Music is a great learning experience which I would never
dissuade the most tone deaf from getting into but, man oh man, there are those
that have it and those that do not – regardless of the number of years of
training. The jury may be out on our’s still but she’s having fun and
if she’s not Sarah McLaughlin one day perhaps she’ll be Ethyl Merman – “wouldja
sing “Oklahoma” for your old man one more time, kiddo?”
Fortunately, I am not in charge of these things so everyone gets a warm fuzzy
from the whole event. And it is surpisingly quite nice to hear 5
kids out of 43 pick out the tune to Hockey Night in Canada as their
favourite winter tune.
Antipodians Needed
Looking at your reading patterns it is clear we do not have enough insomniacs among us. To over come that weakness, I am launching a campaign to include more items of interest to our pals down under: Kiwis, Aussie, Micronesians, the lot. Trouble is I have no idea what would possibly be of interest.
Elephant
I got the White Stripes last CD Elephant the other day. It kind of sounds like Led Zep meets Springsteen’s Nebraska, homemade, but loud buzzy guitars, Robert Plant Houses of the Holy trembly “ahhhh, oooh, yeah baby” kind of singing in the choruses. I wonder what Ogg, child of the ’60’s London blues scene would think? My wife said, you know, I don’t really like music like that – which is odd as she does like Zep. Provides any boy’s daily requirement for loud.
Sophat Vann
Unbeknownst to me last Saturday night, I ate at one of the favourite spots of Ra McGuire, the lead singer from Trooper. It’s information like that that doesn’t change your life but might lead one to pause over one’s Phanaeng Goong (spicy shrimp in basil peanut coconut sauce). [If I see him, there bending over noodle soup noisily, I will call him “Trooper Boy” – I will, I will…]
The Whig last Saturday had a great full page on Mr. Vann…or Mr. Sophat…who has started five different Cambodian restaurants in downtown Kingston – he starts one, gets it going, sells it to someone he trains for a few months and then goes on to open another. When I first moved here I asked whether there had been an immigration wave at some point, thinking it would take a fair number of families from one culture to sustain five restaurants. I got some odd looks. It was, I now learn, a one-man piece of work, creating a momentum for the stuff that helps keep the downtown thriving. Way to go. I have only attended one of his earlier shops, Cambodian Village, so far but his own kitchen Cambodiana is right around the corner.
This is the way it should work. Coming from Nova Scotia, I was used to Lunenburg Greeks, the Lebanese of 1948, the Greeks of the mid-50’s, the Vietnamese of the mid-70’s, the Lebanese of the late 70’s, a guy in my class called Zoltan whose folks got out in ’56, and the former Yugoslavs and their neighbours in the 90’s – and ate their sausage, kibbe, mousakka, croissants (remember the guy at North and Agricola who was a Saigon french pastry chef?), donairs, kapusta and other stuff. In undergrad, I wouldn’t trust a pizza not made by a guy who wasn’t raised on the Mediterranean. I would eat their mother’s home cooking, whatever it was. Food should be an entry to the immigrant experience for the non-immigrant. Eat curry and nans when you are 18 and get a little understanding of understand Mr. Khana, the grade 12 supply math teacher who posed unbelievably hard questions to keep us from being little bastards. Eat a donair from Sam Kasam and Lebanon is a little less about terrorists. Have apples and honey and listen to a friend’s grandfather quiz the young rabbi into embarrassment, think about the menorah. Share a joke over Tom Yum Goong and the jokes at the expense 
of others quickly sour. All in the cause of shaking up the brain and its residue of preconceptions through tasty food.
Even though I am the kid of two immigrants, I don’t, however, expect to see diners based on smoked herring and haggis. Your loss. Maybe in south-east Asia there are trendy corner stalls with chip butties and Irn-Brew…and deep fried Mars bars.