on borrowed wings-chandra prasad

i’m pretty sure this one made the list because the author edited mixed. i read it while i was trying to read myself out of a hole-i don’t think i’ll do that again. the finale of the story is that i caved under the pressure of hoarding those temporary possessions and ended up returning the last dregs of books that i kept so long that it wasn’t worth the guilt of having my account in arrears, even though i wasn’t incurring fines. i’m almost in a similar situation with dvds, but on a slightly more manageable and risky scale because of the one-week loan period(s) that i’m working with. during that moment, i fell in love with fiction again. the politics of substitution in relationships with parent(s), teaching underprivileged kids to read, belonging in higher education, self-discovery and self-definition despite identity politics, and a badass speech by amelia earhart-on borrowed wings, indeed.

“She seemed not to hear me. Putting her hand on my head, she caressed my hair. She was gentle at first, but after a few moments her touch became rough, her fingernails scratching and catching painfully in the snarls. I almost told her to stop. But the desire to have her here beside me was greater than my discomfort, and so I held my tongue.” (36)

“In the mornings I awoke with a salty crust of tears around my eyes-my grief struggling to surface when I was at my weakest, lost in sleep. But by day I would not allow myself to feel. My misery was muted; it had to be. If I faced it in earnest, I would truly down.” (44)

“But by then we were too far gone for headlong emotion. We were charlatans now. We couldn’t afford to wear our hears on our sleeves when our sleeves were stuffed with tricks.” (49)

“He was greedier than I-this surprised me. I thought no one else could feel so lonely.” (206)

“I followed the same protocol as with Mother’s letters, tearing the sheet carefully, until the sentences were halved, then quartered, and finally transformed into meaninglessness.” (275)

“I stared at her blankly. No wonder she’d always assumed I was lazy; I was a spellbound dolt in her company.” (291)

is everyone hanging out without me? (and other concerns)-mindy kaling

this quick read brought almost as much conversation as jane lynch‘s, so the moral of the story is-carry around a new book written by a female in a recently success-full american television franchise (even if it’s a remake of a british show). naaw, just kidding-the real lesson is be a female writer in a success-full american television franchise. pshaaaw. like angela nissel didn’t write the book on that, and co-found okayplayer.com first. we were once friends on myspace, and i got her with the ever logical (and still true) “girls whose names begin and end with ‘a’ are awesome, you know that, right?” but i better stop before someone accuses me of being adam sandler for even mentioning myspace.

the woman is funny, though. now maybe i’ll give the american office a chance. it’s just that nobody beats gervais.

“What happened to me was something that I think happens to a lot of professional comedy writers or comedians, or really anyone who’s passionate about anything and discovering it for the first time. Most people who do what I do are obsessed with comedy, especially during adolescence. I think we all have that moment when our non-comedy-obsessed friends or family are like: ‘Nope. I’m at my limit. I can’t talk about In Living Color anymore. It’s kind of funny, but come on.’” (40)

riiight? obsession is the mother of all…yea-that’s actually a pretty complete sentiment in itself.

“But then, behind Paris, I saw Sacha Baron Cohen quietly exit the restaurant completely unnoticed, walk up to the valet, get in his car, and drive away. Can you believe that? I mean, it’s Sacha Baron Fuckin’ Cohen! (Wasn’t sure where to put the fuckin’ in there, but I think I chose right.) None of the paparazzi had any idea who he was, but he was also, like Conan, one of the most respected living comedy icons in the world. And I thought, Man, I want to be that famous.” (59)

me fuckin’ too. countdown to the dictator, my posse. yes nehal, i said “posse”, but i still want to see you quote froho all the same. i love that promo for this upcoming epic is just a large portrait staring down on all of us in yonge/dundas square.

“WHEN I GET OLD, I’M A SIGHT GAG FOR TV SHOWS

I want to be so famous that people put me in their TV shows as the dessicated old broad who gets big laughs simply because no one has ever seen such an old bag of bones recite memorized lines, and because the sight of me brings up warm, nostalgic memories of their youth. Future hipsters will love me ironically.” (61-2)

ouch. that’s a sharp betty white dig.

i ain’t scared of you-bernie mac

the detroit public library is pretty freakin’ spectacular, but one of my fondest memory of one of the branches i visited was the large framed bernie mac PSA that presided over a magnificent reading room. on that same trip, a laugh was shared in the hotel room over a joke in the reruns of his show. his role in head of state is everything obama needed to be convinced to choose al sharpton as his running mate (sigh-c’mon, you know that woulda been great…). this “prediction” is bittersweet, because of how true it was/is:

“I’m not being foolish. When that time comes, I can ride off into the sunset, me and Rhonda. And feel good about myself, knowing I gave 150%. I’m going out on top.” (88)

RIP to one of the original kings.
bigup to the underground cinema for finding this library book in the pews for me when i dropped it at that jamel shabazz doc presented by undercurrents last week. 51416 had me all excited and things…

how to be black-baratunde thurston

“the library has this already? isn’t it brand new?”

oh yes, boyfriend to the nation-the library is fantastic. not only is it already in circulation, but i joined the queue (i guess i sound like a brit because we’re part of their commonwealth, and not because of football) before it was officially released. this was also the case for rza‘s book, btw. i literally laughed out loud many times, and loved the way that collaboration was utilized and acknowledged, all the way to the footnotes. also, i also have fond memories of boozing with my daddy-specifically the shot of beer he’d give me every night for dinner to counteract the daily cup of coffee that my mother and grandmother let me have at the grocery store. neither of them knew about the upper/downer that they were feeding their four-year-old, but such is the reality of immigrant parents that couldn’t afford to live separately during their divorce.

there are some truths that are true even if people believe otherwise. but sometimes it’s our job to say things in another way, in a funny way, in order to make the point more palatable. i witnessed a great lecture by angela davis about the missed opportunity of making police brutality a public issue in the aftermath of the henry louis gates jr. fiasco, but here is mister thurston‘s amazing way:

“Undoubtedly, incidents of a racial nature will occur on your watch, and you will be tempted and expected to comment on them. Avoid this instinct. Remain silent on the most intense racial issues. Occasionally, you can comment, but do so in a more symbolic fashion, perhaps by inviting the aggrieved parties to your home for a beverage, awkward conversation, and photo ops.” (195)

lush life-david hadju

i may have waited too long to turn up for rehearsals for the bollywood flash mob as hosted by the national ballet school. what is it about mirrors in dance studios that make a woman feel so damn self-conscious? anyways, i’m glad for the opportunity to say that i danced there, a monumental building in my own toronto history, as it’s right across the street from the home of my first gay husband. i did fairly well considering it was my first try, though i suspect that i will be cut from beginning the number (just a hunch). afterwards, i went to the maple leaf loblaws with the intention of buying an avocado, but abandoned it in favour for fancy olives for brigid because they were going for two and a half dollars a pop. it was something of a post-modern moment when i turned to notice an employee named mohammed ali (in a space where george chuvalo fought muhammad ali some years ago-thanks, george). before i could get to end of a smile, some 20-somethings rocking all the finest in ’90s gear rolled up to ask him “where the boathouse drinks are?” (sigh). with basketball on my mind, here’s to this book by one of my favorite music writers about one of the scottie pippen of jazz:

“A variety of assumptions about and perceptions of Strayhorn had settled into conventional wisdom within jazz circles. Among the most pervasive: Strayhorn was a raw talent with no professional experience until Ellington discovered him and groomed him in his own image. Strayhorn dedicated his entire professional life to the service of Duke Ellington and did virtually nothing outside Ellington’s orbit. Strayhorn’s role in Elligton’s organization was, essentially, to assist Ellington in executing Ellington’s ideas as Ellington wanted. Strayhorn was Ellington’s alter ego and wrote in a style so akin to Ellington’s that few people could distinguish their work.
Meanwhile, I found, an embittered subculture of Strayhorn devotees had long been clinging to equally reductive mirror views: Ellington was just a glamorous figurehead. Strayhorn really wrote all of his music of worth.
Promulgated for years, none of this turned out to be so simple. Much of it proved dead wrong.
Indeed, illusion emerged as one of the central themes of Billy Strayhorn’s life.” (xi)

“Brazenly (or naively) the twenty-three-year-old artist demonstrated both a crafty facility with his renowned elder’s idiom and a spirited capacity to expand it through his own sensibility. The potency struck Ellington, Greenlee recounted: ‘Billy was playing. Duke stood there behind him beaming, and he put his hands on his shoulders, like he wanted to feel Billy playing his song.’” (51)

“The misconception was the Ellington put Strayhorn there because Billy knew what Duke would do,” said Henderson. “The truth was the opposite: Ellington put Billy there to do what he wanted, because Duke knew that whatever Billy did would be great.” (103)

jeff in venice, death in varanasi-geoff dyer

this was a recommendation from one of the hottest young american writers as decided by huffington or the ny times or one other such “authority”. at any rate, it was a quick read, the perfect hat trick for my recent fiction favour. i decided to return the ongoing moment, the author’s critically-acclaimed non-fiction offering that i also had in the pile of overdues-a pile that i mostly gave up on, bringing my total remaining down to 3/60. i have also started making holds active and my micro-collection is slowly growing again. i thank badu often for the public library. here’s to going out of town, and stumbling on some sex:

“That was the thing about the Biennale: it was a definitive experience, absolutely fixed, subject only to insignificant individual variation. You came to Venice, you saw a ton of art, you went to parties, you drank up a storm you talked bollocks for hours on end and went back to London with a cumulative hangover, liver damage, a notebook almost devoid of notes and the first tingle of a cold sore.” (27)

“They disentangled their legs and arms, feeling, he suspected, a little self-conscious now about how their faces had ended up in each other’s genitals. Intimacy is not consistent or uniform; it has its own delays and lags. He was also wondering, slightly, about the etiquette of what had just happened. Were they supposed to have fucked? Laura, evidently, was thinking along the same lines.” (95)

“This was the unique freedom, the supreme indulgence of the hotel room: not the opportunities for afternoon sex, for snorting coke and licking ass, but the freedom to put the telly on at any time of the day, to watch anything (basically nothing) without shame or guilt. If he spent more time in hotel rooms, he would never read another book. If the whole world lived in hotels, no one would read anything more demanding than the in-room dining menu.” (141-2)

“A strange, modern form of intimacy-not Victorian at all-that made it easier to lick someone’s ass than to ask when you might see them again.” (148)

“I’d come to Varanansi because there was nothing to keep me in London, and I stayed on for the same reason: because there was nothing to go home for.” (241)

see chris rock‘s taxonomy of “domestic dick”. even when there are no strings attached, there are puppets and marionettes. who’s pulling your (heart) strings?

flossy’s rapt-up 2011-12

“..there’s no denying the fact that it’s wrong/you probably got a man who’s probably playing his part, you probably breaking his heart, he trynna figure the reason you gone/is it ‘cuz he’s superficial? or is he too submissive? or did i come along and hit you with the futuristic…”

“so we don’t bother the woman”

DO YOU LIKE THE RAPTORS?! sometimes, adolescent boys are so genuinely excited that it’s hard not to beam. monday night was the last home game i was able to attend this (short and wonky) season. i thought we’d have a chance to extend our winning streak to two after the win over those poor, unfortunate celtics (the ones that we also beat at home earlier and the season and the very same ones that just lost to the knicks). alas and alack, that was not the case, but that didn’t detract from the general bliss that comes from watching a high-paced sport. perhaps i’ve always loved basketball because games are such a compact collection of micro-opportunities for elation and heartbreak. i’ve managed to glean from the four games that i’ve been to this season a) spike lee‘s relationship with his team, b) highlights can never communicate when a team is playing hard all the way through (i was there for the 25-point blowout against washington) and c) like grocery shopping being most efficient when done around the perimeter, live nba games are best when you just pay attention to the game and not all the shenanigans that are happening around you/all the advertising noise. the halftime show has ranged from kardi to naughty by nature to serbian folk dancers, and well, that’s toronto. demar derozan was honoured for his community service for his work getting books to kids, and that just warms my heart. the guys got called for traveling (and both teams were called a lot for 3 in the key, so shaq must really be retired-though my money’s on him to return in hologram) three times, so let’s hope that’s not foreshadowing. to the kanye instrumentals and beyond….see y’all ballers in the fall.

gabrielle hamilton at the toronto reference library

“he cooked in a restaurant that i used to do a lot of coke in”

consider this fair warning that i’m about to send out a barrage of ideas and happenings. i’ve been lagging in the blogging because i’ve been experiencing and processing and shit. but basically; i’m back to grateful, and thus, back to great-full. the difference between alison fryer interviewing gabrielle hamilton at the library and oldentitledwhitelady interviewing esi edugyan at the library is style, respect (or lack thereof), and laziness.

“it might be kind of harsh for me to say to my kids-’i don’t need to go to work, i want to go to work.’”

so let me take back the old in the above christening, i have nothing against old people. in fact-my return on tuesday to the play-reading group was one of the highlights of my week, along with the bulkbarn candy sac en route to the carlton cinema to watch 21 jumpstreet for five bux. (ice muthafuckin’ cube! and what, did dustin nguyen refuse to make the cameo? as someone that still laments that her portable dvd player was stolen with episode on which he was speaking vietnamese on mainstream american television, that screen on-screen tribute was not lost on me)

but from an interviewer’s point of view, it’s really nice when the person you’re probing stops, smiles, and thanks you for asking the question. last night’s incidence of this was “what is something that isn’t known about your restaurant that we don’t know about?”

the answer involved paying staff on time, having everyone work very hard but very smart, presenting double-salt licorice (a strong digestive) with every lunch bill, and peeling people’s soft-boiled eggs.

“is this a real allergy or are you trying to show me you’re the boss?”

“i’m not a good mentor until i’m paired with someone who’s very eager. i can’t inspire, you need to bring your own work ethic”*

at risk of reading too much personal parallel into this book/talk (like everyone who asked a question), i really appreciated the candor, graciousness, and listening that gabrielle brought to the table last night, and the non-divaness of alison to wear her interview hat (only). ok, and her ranty hat on the fact that most (food) blogs are shit, but only for a moment. but there was a really beauty-full moment when gabrielle recounted wynton marsalis saying that you can tell a lot about a kid by the way he holds his horn, and extrapolating this to the kitchen (and i’m going to push it to life and one’s own body). she relates it to how folks stand in the kitchen, how they react to heat:

“if you see someone standing with their groin far away from the heat the way that enemies kiss…”

i’m glad that nadia ended up coming with me, and that she now has a book (with a new chapter!) to read on her next adventure. i’m also glad that we were together to hear the truths about “not suffering future pain”, the constant renewal and shift of the pursuit of purpose and checking in that your actions line up with your beliefs. as writers, i’m also glad that we were together to hear the advice about voice:

“i was looking for a voice i could live with for 300 pages.”

“the best advice i got about voice was “to talk to the smartest person you know about everything you hate about the subject with as much compassion as you can muster.”

wow. big time. like delivering a riveting diversity workshop to 100+ white women and not revealing one’s pecs of spectacular with the power to halt an otherwise smooth skype call. (this also happened this night-i love my life).

“i can’t go down that male/female road. anyone who’s really preoccupied with their gender (in this business) makes me uncomfortable.”

read the book, peoples, read the book. (grumble grumble).
(brackets mine, for emphasis)
*all quotes may be paraphrased and coloured by emotional awe of writer.

finally, i managed to sneak back and grab her hand and exclaim “you’re the best!” as she was finishing her signature on bash‘s book and she looked up with a surprised yet smiling, “thank you”.

indeed. i may have to end my separation with nyc to eat at prune. and candle 79. though they could respond to me about my outlandish and crazy request to be flown here to cater cj‘s wedding, already. i can put it on the company account, like my pig(s). it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission….

o amor natural-(dir.)heddy honigmann

when i had that sex column in montrill, one of the ideas that i pitched that was cast aside was “elder sex”. i was told that no one would be interested, but i suspect that the only folks that wouldn’t be interested are those that think that sex will be over for them at some point (clearly, not us horndogs). someone picked it up at the mcgill daily, however, so bigups. they’ve always been the progressive paper (they’re the reason that my mission to stalk sherwin tjia was easy as pie) on the more conservative campus, the reverse of concordia down the way. i’m of the camp that nothing really changes in this world, our focus and access to technology just shifts. for example-more old folks today are testing positive for STIs. does this mean that all of a sudden they’re fucking their brains out? hardly. it’s just that people are (finally) clueing in that STIs and regular checkups are the way to be. just like more men are not being abused by women, but our attitudes around abuse and shame are (s l o w l y) shifting so that folks can speak out (somewhat) freely. anyways, this gem, which is another gift from the library strike, is amazing because of the people who are discovering a different side of a poet that they’ve already loved as a contemporary. the sharing of these poems between partners, friends, and family, as well as the discussion it sparks is truly amazing. also-this documentary is about two hours long, and it took me about an hour and a half to realize that i don’t actually speak portuguese. that’s what a good poet does beyond language, s/he communicates intent. i really don’t understand portuguese with dutch subtitles, so i can’t post a trailer here, but i found this clip of the filmmaker speaking on the difference between people and subjects. bigups.

best music writing 2010-ann powers (guest editors)

“we’re indoctrinating ourselves with our own views”

life truly is about the moments that make us stop what we’re doing and say whoa (shout to black rob). like witnessing a 12-year-old girl aggressively scratch her vagina on national television whilst spelling “neurotic” (i was at the live taping of spelling night in canada). the one that yielded this quote came from the philly free library podcast i was listening to this morning discussing eli pariser‘s the filter bubble. it’s all about how the specialization of the internet by google and facebook et al. is putting a cap on the learning that is possible for us because it’s only steering us towards people/robots that think and search exactly like we do. i was thinking about how i could put this into my arsenal to argue further with the customer that complains about the “freeloaders” at the library, because the physical presence of searchers and materials that you may not know you’re looking for is a valuable experience. it is because of the recent strike that my home branch put out everyone else’s dvds that had been returned there so that we could have access to some different collections and enjoy the longer return date. it is because of that that i saw the whistleblower (dir. larysa kondracki) a necessary film about the UN’s complicity in human trafficking rings that is also absolutely sensationalist for its extreme focus on rape and murder (no, i am not immune-even after all these years). it is the reason that i got back in touch with one of my old women’s studies profs on the west coast. here’s the tie to this book:

“Now it’s not a game of hearing the right records, it’s hearing the leak the fastest. Music websites report on leaks-and they still don’t cover them fast enough ‘cause Twitter people cover the leaks. When Animal Collective’s last album leaked a month ago, everyone was talking about it. So when the reviews came a month later, it was completely pointless. All that a music review does now is reinforce the opinion that somebody already has. And it’s not like music writing on the Internet is especially interesting or good or insightful or worth reading. People have this open maw, this endless abyss and they just write for 3,000 words. And if it doesn’t fit into 140 characters it’s not worth saying. We don’t need 3000 words of twaddle on a record. Sometimes it requires less and editors aren’t there copy-checking it.
So, one of the unfortunate side effects of the lack of critic culture is that people are getting more stratified and separated in their listening habits. If you read Spin or Rolling Stone in ’96, you’d get an article on Nine Inch Nails, an article on Chemical Brothers, an article on Snoop Dogg. And the internet doesn’t work that way. If you’re into rap, you go to rap twitters. If you’re into metal, you got to metal twitters. Bands build audiences for themselves, you just follow the bands you like. You don’t stumble across this stuff. And that’s a problem. It’s harder to get exposed to stuff that’s not in your comfort zone. I have friends that are so deep into indie rock that they don’t know what the fuck Katy Perry is, or Lady Gaga. And these are the most ubiquitous songs in the country. Number one on Billboard for 14 weeks: ‘I don’t know what it is.’
So guys like me, the eclectic music dorks, we’re all looking for new careers because people are going to be the hip-hop expert, the African music expert, the reggaeton expert. And that dude [BusinessWeek.com editor-in-chief] John Byrne was up here saying that Twitter makes it easy to find stuff that pertains to you. And he thinks that’s awesome. That’s the fucking problem. I can always learn about stuff that’s important to me-that’s easy. I want to learn about stuff that isn’t important to me. I want to be exposed to things.
Crowdsourcing killed punk rock. Hands down. Crowdsourcing kills art. Crowdsourcing killed indie rock. It’s bullshit. You wanna know why? Because crowds have terrible taste. People have awful taste. Once people start talking about indie rock on the Internet, it’s all this music that rises to the middle. This boring, bland, white-people guitar music. It fucking sucks! I hate it! This NPR bullshit. And NPR is forced to write about it over and over again because it’s the ‘link economy’ and people are gonna click on it if it says ‘Fleet Foxes.’ Well, Fleet Foxes fucking sucks. It’s not the music that’s the best, it’s the music that the most people can stand. The music that most people can listen to. If you let the people decide then nothing truly adventurous ever gets out, and that’s a problem.” (57, Twitter & The Death of Rock Criticism, Christopher R. Weingarten)

speaking of punk rock-george is looking rested and relaxed in my hometown. bigups to narai for opening one of the shows. the audience turnout/studio setup is quite a bit different from when i first met him all those years ago at the firehall in the downtown eastside.