The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Fluffers

Obviously I didn't have the time or the consistent web access to detail all the little adventures I was getting into on my trip, as I've done in the past. So, to suffice, here are some random notes from the last nine or ten days...

-- if you're a ghost/hauntings fan, you may already know that England is a goldmine for that stuff. But whether you are or not, I highly, highly recommend The Shiverpool Ghost Tour in Liverpool. This is the Citizen Kane of haunted walks. Seriously. They don't just take you to locations and tell you stories: they turn it into a full theatrical experience, complete with two flamboyant guides decked out in full gothic pseudo-Victorian dress and saucy personas. They mix dramatic, first-rate storytelling with cheeky dark comedy and quirky characterization. (One of my favourite lines was when we were crossing at a pedestrian light and one guide announced, "The green demon is on our side.") Yes, it is one of those walks where they have somebody leap out at points to scare you... but after the first time, you're conditioned to expect it, so it's not really a big deal. I loved every step of it. Hilarious and creepy, especially the eerie climax at the Liverpool Cathedral cemetery
-- Sheffield kind of sucks. There's nothing wrong with it, per se, but I didn't really feel like I fit in there. It's a pretty plain working-class city, albeit with lots of students due to its two universities. Sort of the Hamilton of England. To its credit, it does have a really good tram system. And there was a neat (if small) sci-fi-themed exhibit at one of the campuses. But otherwise, I was bored enough that I ended up going to see Kung Fu Panda at one of the cinemas
-- Manchester is full of great spoken-word events, cool pubs and dance clubs, and hot bisexual berds, but I may have already mentioned that
-- stayed with nice (and very attractive) CouchSurfer in Stratford, who not only made a lovely vegetarian dinner for me and one of her friends, but also accompanied me on a bit of sightseeing
-- had a grand time at Poetry Unplugged on Tuesday night. I did a rousing "Party like Juan" before a sizeable audience and got great response and feedback. If only my gigs had been more like that
-- saw Wicked in London on Wednesday afternoon. I'm normally not a big fan of mega-musicals, but I thought the concept of the play sounded interesting and I was curious; also wanted to see something I was unfamiliar with. As in all mega-musicals, the emphasis is more on the spectacle and the divas' vocal ranges than on the story or character, and of course the dialogue and lyrics were written with a sledgehammer. It was all right, I guess; I liked the Wizard's "Wonderful" song and a few other aspects, but it wasn't what I'd call groundbreaking theatre. I wish more contemporary musicals were like Avenue Q, which is full of wit, cleverness, originality and hummable songs...

Now that I'm back, one of the first things I want to do is catch the movies I've been missing. The Dark Knight for sure, but also WALL-E and the new documentary about Roman Polanski. The last thing I feel like doing for a while is drinking or going out to poetry...

Do you ever find that your home looks strangely unfamiliar to you after you've been away travelling, even when it's just for a few days?
I get that every single time, and yesterday it felt especially surreal. I returned from my second-longest trip ever outside of Canada, and my own apartment seemed almost completely alien to me. On top of that, I began to objectively see how truly clean and tidy I keep it, as compared to some of the messy flats I stayed at over in England. I often think of my place as a little dirty, if only because I'm too lazy to dust and sweep on a regular basis, but it's actually quite spare and clean.

Today I'm back at work but probably shouldn't be. Very jet-lagged and dizzy and disoriented and unable to focus, with the odd headache due to lack of sleep. Oh, and my throat is still sore. It's been bad since Liverpool, where I had to cut my Costa Cafe set short because my voice was gone and I sounded like the creaky teenager from The Simpsons. Now it doesn't hurt so much, but I keep having these out-of-nowhere, uncontrollable coughing fits at inappropriate moments. This disturbed a lot of people on the flight home yesterday, plus it's keeping me up at night, which doesn't help my mental state.

Once again, my luggage was searched on coming back into Canada for no apparent reason. However, the girl doing the searching was very nice and friendly, didn't seem suspicious about anything but was just doing her job. She gave me a funny look when she came across the wig and the Froggy puppet (yes, I'm still performing those old bits occasionally); I just said I was returning them to somebody, and she took my word for it. Who knows what she was looking for, or whether I was filling their quota or merely had said the wrong thing at customs. Either way, it was a bloody waste of my time.

The last gig on Wednesday night could have gone a lot better. The turnout was in the double-digits at first, but then a few of them left during the intermission interval, including the musical act (not cool, guys. If you want people to support your act, then you should support others' too). Then these other two bimbos got up and left right after their friend read his set -- very rude and uncool. Of course I was introduced at the very end, when there were only about seven people left. On the plus side, the host decided to let me extend my set longer as I was from out of town. The people who were still there seemed to like it, and I sold a bit of merch. And I got paid 20 quid. I have no idea where the host even got the 20 quid, considering the low turnout, but it was welcome.
Still, I felt pissed and whiny that I'd extended my trip a whole extra week just for this one gig. Not a good showing for a series so well known that had packed the room only two weeks before. Evidently summer is not a very good time of year to do poetry gigs in the U.K., and the host suggested I try again in the fall or winter.

But I'm almost wondering if, next time I go, I should just forget about going to all that trouble booking gigs in advance, and instead just look for all-open-mic nights. They're the nights that bring people. Some of the more satisfying spoken-word experiences I've had over there have been just doing open mics.

Have been back in London since Monday. Last gig over here is tonight, and then I'm flying home tomorrow.
It occurs to me now that I've barely looked at a newspaper or kept up with current events in the past three weeks. For all I know, there might have been another 9/11-style catastrophe and I had no idea. (Has anybody famous died that I should know about?)

I still love this city, but much of the thrill I used to have is gone. I think I'm too familiar with London now, I've seen most of the sights (although I still enjoy going on the walking tours), and I can get around through much of it without using a map. It's like a country boy who's just moved to Toronto for the first time: after a month of living there, seeing the CN Tower is no big deal. A perfect example of this happened about two weeks ago, when I was waiting to cross the street near the Parliament buildings and some teenage or college-age guy nudged me excitedly, pointed and said in a thick accent: "Look! Thass Big Ben! It's Big Ben, innit?" And all I could say was... "Yup. That's Big Ben." (The older woman who was with him -- his mother? -- shrugged and told me, "He don't get out of Yorkshire too much.")
When I come to London now, what I really want to do is socialize with the locals, go to open mics, drink and see theatre. I went to Avenue Q again the other night (as nuala hadn't seen it yet), and saw The Mousetrap yesterday (and really liked it). I love theatre in Britain. Here, mainstream live theatre doesn't seem like the elitist medium it is in Toronto -- it's a popular community thing, almost like a classier and more expensive version of going to a movie. The only problem I have is that I get severe stage envy... I want to be down there playing with the actors too.

I don't know what it is but I think I'm starting to get a bit disillusioned with the poetry and spoken-word scene (I mean in general, both here and at home) and wonder if I should make an effort to move on to something else (e.g. comedy or theatre). Maybe it's just that my gigs on this tour have had some depressingly small turnouts; ironically some of the most satisfying nights I've had here have been just doing open mics, such as Freed Up in Manchester or Poetry Unplugged in London. But either way... whether you're in Canada or England, it is SO fucking hard to get people out to poetry or literary nights. Each city has its own tight little community that feeds off each other, making it kind of incestuous, while people outside that community tend to have very preconceived notions about poetry events -- that they're just boring monotonous recitations about nature and kittens. (And the saddest part is that sometimes they're right!) The big exception is slam, of course, but I don't like the competition aspect and don't want to write in that style. So I'm just wondering if I should start looking for another type of writing or performance in which I can be true to my own values and style while doing events that people actually want to go to.

You'd be surprised at how bad some of the poets are over here. Holy crap. There are some good ones too, of course, but many are either simply bad writers, or possibly decent writers who can't present their work worth shite. With a literary/poetry tradition as solid as England's, you expect a little more quality.

Another brief update... I've been busy doing stuff so have not taken any time to post despite having web access at the places I've been staying, although I've been checking e-mail and Facebook. Right now I'm in Stratford upon Avon again and using a computer on which the ENTER key is busted, so I can't make new paragraphs. Anyway: spent two days in Sheffield, gig went all right, I got the attention of a good amount of people in a noisy pub, and two of the people from last time I was there came out again. Then went back to Manchester for two days and visited with Jackie as well as doing a couple of poetry open mics, drinking and dancing, and so on. We also went to the Body World exhibit, which is currently in Manchester (I missed it back when it was in Toronto). Crazy shit. I can only imagine the chaos if a hungry dog got loose in there. Came to Stratford yesterday, went to an amazing production of A Midsummer Night's Dream last night; today saw part of a somewhat crappy Shakespeare-in-the-park production of Macbeth (Lady Macbeth was hot and saucy, but that's all you could say for it), then visited the Trinity church because the CouchSurfer I'm with had never been to Shakespeare's grave before, went to a fun musical-hall-revue sort of show with Shakespeare-related songs and skits, and then went on yet another haunted house tour (sali_mali, you are so missing out here...). Tomorrow, it's back to London for a few days of more theatre and more spoken word. Ta ta.

Quick update from Liverpool. I've been here since Saturday and am leaving for Sheffield in a few hours, though I might check out the slavery museum for a bit just before I go to catch the bus.

I was devoid of Internet access for a while because I was erroneously told that the only web cafes in the city were way way out in the suburbs. I only found out yesterday that not only was there a nice (though pricey) one a short walk from where I was staying, but there's a really good and cheap one in the Clayton Square mall as well. It sucked because I was trying to get in touch with Jackie to see if she could come out here on Sunday, and when I phoned her she was out.
But it did give me a chance to fall back in love with Liverpool... and not just because of the Beatles connection. The weather has mostly been great here. It's a lovely city in the summer. I went on the National Trust tour of the Lennon/McCartney childhood homes, which was amazing -- and then later on I went on this incredible haunted tour, which blows away all the others I've been on away. I'll decribe in more detail later.

Gig last night was okay, nothing special. The worst part was I had a sore throat and couldn't project much, so I called it quits early. It was a small literary series in a Costa cafe (the British equivalent of Starbucks or Second Cup), with about eighteen or nineteen people in the audience (a few of whom snuck out during the break, which was before I went on). Didn't get paid at all, but a few people bought merch, so that was good. I'm getting tired of the low turnouts, though. I don't know how the Sheffield feature is going to go, but I have my best hopes for Express Excess next week.

Well, last night was a big disappointment. I was supposed to be performing at a well-known series in Islington (along with a comedy duo from the Edinburgh fringe)... but almost nobody showed up. It was just the two organizers, the performers and a couple of the performers' friends (including nuala), and that's it. The organizers acted kind of embarrassed, cancelled the show, apologized to us and gave us each £5 (which was good, except that I'd already spent £10-15 on dinner and drinks). I was actually perfectly willing to go on with the show, even if we were just performing for our miniscule little group, but everybody else wanted to cancel it.

The one good thing was that I got to catch up with Dora for a little bit, but otherwise the evening was a huge letdown. I had been really looking forward to this gig. When I went to the same series last year, it was a packed house, with a few great, funny, well-liked headliners and an atmosphere of energy and fun. I had the impression (both from that night and from outside hearsay) that this was a pretty popular series with a loyal regular audience. That's not the impression I had last night, though. It seemed like they'd done little to promote the show (there were a few posters up at the pub, but Facebook invites hadn't gone out until Tuesday). True, the usual host wasn't there and it is summertime, but still, you'd think there'd have been a few regulars out.

Wednesday night I went to Express Excess; I'm featuring in their July 23 show and thought it would be wise to check it out in advance. This one was a standing-room-only turnout in a fun, performance-based series. I wasn't terribly impressed with the features themselves, though. One was a stand-up comic, supposedly award-nominated, whose jokes bombed a lot, but he got a few laughs but doing rap songs about un-rap-like subjects such as sandwiches. The other was kind of an improvised mock interview with a local journalist which was full of London topical references that made the audience laugh but were mostly over my head as a visitor. (And both acts went on waaaaaaaay too long.) But whatever. I'm hoping for a similar turnout and energy when I do the show in two weeks' time.

Otherwise, what've I been up to?
Went to Hampton Court Palace yesterday; today doing a couple of walking tours. Tomorrow leaving for Liverpool and other places northwards for a week of performing, sightseeing and other stuff.

As much as I love British people and British culture, there is one simple reason why I would never make a very good Brit myself. That reason is: I fucking hate fucking RAIN.

Loathe it. Despise it. I resent rain and all that it stands for.
And I must have been lucky on my past three trips here, because this time, that's the majority of what I've been seeing here. All rain all the time. Or else it's the unpredictable swervings from sunny and warm to miserable power showers, especially in the north. I wanted to do a couple of outdoor-related things today, but the pigfucking rain got in the way and spoiled my mood.

Have been in London since Monday. The Internet at the hostel is 50p for every ten minutes, and it wasn't until after I'd already used it three times that I discovered the really, really cool web cafe around the corner that's £1 for the first hour and 50p for each consecutive hour. That's where I am now, obviously. The only problem is that there's no public washroom toilet here, so I have to dash back to the hostel (in the fucking rain) if I have an emergency in that regard.

Last night's gig at Poetry Shack was lots of fun in spite of the low turnout; the people who did come were all really cool and laughed at the right parts during my set. The show had a summer theme; the host introduced it by reciting Shakespeare's 18th sonnet ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...") and then for each featured reader, she wrote an impromptu sonnet parodying Shakespeare's 18th about the reader. I was duly impressed. People have written spontaneous poems about me before, but never a sonnet in perfect iambic pentametre. I insisted she e-mail it to me. A.F. Harrold's set was wonderful and funny as he always is, and there were free strawberries too.

Other things I have done in the past few days: featured at Poetry Party in Manchester; went to the Museum of London; saw a play adaptation of Brief Encounter (like the one I saw last year of The 39 Steps, it was quite campy and self-referential yet enjoyable on its own terms); had dinner with nuala; and gave an impromptu spoken-word performance for a sweet Irish girl I met in a pub patio and then listened to her rant about her selfish twat of a boyfriend.

Went to an amazing stand-up comedy night at Manchester's The Comedy Store -- it was so good it effectively backed up the popular notion that British comedy is far better than North American comedy. Hell, British comedy is better than North American comedy even when it's influenced by North American comedy.

The closing act was this one guy who was sort of a hybrid of Electric Jon and Mark McKinney (and with a Manky accent, of course), if that makes any sense. That's the only way I could think of to describe him. His whole shtick was a stream-of-consciousness mesh of imitations, different characters, and dance parody. A third of the time, he stood facing the back wall having a conversation with himself (in different voices) about how he should hit on the blond girl in the front row.
Another guy was doing a routine about snake bites, accidently said "anecdote" instead of "antidote" -- and then went off on a brilliant improvised tangent about people who need to cure snake bites by telling anecdotes. Trust me, you had to see it. I'd describe more but my online time is running out...

Hello. In Manchester today. Internet here costs £1 per half-hour so plan to be brief.
Had free web access in York but no time to post...

Gig in Leeds went all right. Turnout could have been better (evidently I was competing with some silly tennis game on the telly), and they didn't laugh as much as I'd hoped (except for during "Party Like Juan"), but I sold a decent amount of merch and got paid a lot of money as well as a free dinner and a shitload of drinks. (Features at the series get paid by the venue itself, not via the cover intake)

Then spent two days in York sightseeing, trying to see all I didn't have time to see last year... went on a ghost tour, visited a "real" haunted house, saw the Jorvic Viking Centre (tacky but fun, with skeletons and shit) and the Castle Museum (very, very good). Also saw the Roman Baths, Yorkminster Cathedral, the Merchants' Hall, etc.

Just came from a bus tour of Manchester, which was a little disappointing because it started pouring rain halfway through, and also because it went way out to the 'burbs just so we could see the big mall and a lot of stuff to do with the silly soccer football. Have gig at Fuel Cafe Bar in Withington tomorrow night. Also plan to do laundry and rehearse for said gig.

I keep meaning to post, but stuff keeps coming up. Mostly work stuff, but also some tour- and travel-preparation stuff. And now I don't have much interesting to say, except I'm leaving tonight.

I can't believe how far down the U.K. exchange rate has come. Or maybe the Canadian dollar has gone up. Either way, the rate is at about 2 now. Which is still ridiculous, but the best I've seen it.
Ironically, most of my accommodations this time will be free. Which only leaves me with more money for drinks, I guess. I had a slight panic a few days ago because one of my CouchSurfers has apparently flaked out (not heard from her in several weeks) and another suddenly has to travel for work when I'm in town. But the cool Manchester hostel I stayed in last year still had a bed available, and somebody else in the other city pulled through for me on short notice.

I've never flown Air Transat before. Hope they have decent movies. Hope more that I can get some sleep.
My plan is fly to London, take the first train to King's Cross station and then catch the first train to Leeds. The last thing I need is a long delay, but there should be plenty of time if all goes as it should.

See you in a few weeks. I don't know when I'll have web access this time around.
I doubt I'll be back with a sun tan, but there's always a chance I'll have a bigger overbite and crooked teeth.

(This is another one of my long and boring film-related posts. If such does not interest, I may write a more ranty and less analytical entry later on.)

Entertainment Weekly: "100 New Movie Classics" list

Jim Emerson's excellent new blog entry on the subject

As somebody who loves classic movies, even prefers them to most current hits and critical darlings, I have to say I find this list rather laughable. Then again, I don't usually go to Entertainment Weekly for deep perspectives on film art.

My definition of a "classic", in movies or books or music or anything, is simply something that is so good that it remains good for years and years. It outlives its time. It outlasts the artistic trends and changing social/political contexts that pass it by, because its primary subject matter is universal and timeless, because the emotional impact is that powerful, and because the artistic craft or style is unique and bold enough that you can't match it to anything before or later. Human nature can be pretty consistent in what it laughs at, fears or dreams of: that's why some of Charlie Chaplin's movies are still funny today and many of Hitchcock's and Polanski's films can still disturb you on some level.
That's why it's probably foolish to try and "predict" what's going to become a classic, or to add relatively new films to the canon, because how can you know? When critics use the phrase "an instant classic", they're stating a blatant oxymoron.

Just from a glance of this list...
The few entries in the top 50 alone that I agree may be either already classics, or considered classics in the future, include: Pulp Fiction, maybe Lord of the Rings (though I've still only seen the first one), Toy Story, Goodfellas, Boogie Nights, Do the Right Thing, Schindler's List, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, maybe Children of Men, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... and I think that's about it. (Saving Private Ryan will be remembered because it's by Spielberg and because of the groundbreaking battle scenes, but it's not among his best.) There are other movies there that I like but am not sure they really carry enough weight to be "classics", and there are still others that just make me snort. Jerry Maguire? Moulin Rouge? Pretty Woman?? Give me a break.

But what do I know? I don't have glasses that see into the future either, and I might change my mind about the movies I mentioned above in years to come. Nobody will know for sure until another generation has passed, and we'll see what we -- and the kids -- are still watching then.

Quick plug:
A couple of days before I head across the ocean, I'll be performing in the next Sunday Night Special at Mississauga's The Lost Lounge.

The other performers at this variety show will be The Trombolinas, Kansas Flash Dance, No Brigade and Tonnn.
There will also be paintings by Brittney Townson and jewellery by Moriah Kostuk-Simpson. If you're in the area, why not drop by?

Sunday, June 29, 7:00 p.m.
The Lost Lounge, 1177 Central Parkway West (near Burnhamthorpe), Mississauga
$7

Just found out about Carlin.

Before that, though, I had an idea. Somebody should do a new Lassie or Benji movie in which the human characters still speak English but have subtitles that read, "Bark, bark" and "Bark, growl, whine, bark."

I also had a number of funky dreams last night, most of which I can't remember.
At one point, my sister had a big new apartment that I was visiting. For some reason, the walls were all bare and painted sky blue. In the kitchen, there was a huge window that took up most of the wall and was almost like a movie or big TV screen. I was alone in the kitchen looking out the window, when I saw two small rockets lift off (evidently my sister lived next to Cape Canaveral or some Canadian equivalent?). The two rockets went up, then curved in a sort of parabola motion, went down and crashed. Then there was a pause, and then there were rockets and bullets flying and shooting all over the place. I called out to somebody in the other room, "This doesn't happen all the time, does it?"

Ottawa people:

Burning Effigy Press (burningeffigy) is coming to the nation's capital.
Yes -- for the first time, we're going to have a table at the annual Ottawa Small Press Book Fair.

The 2008 fair is tomorrow from 12:00 to 5:00 p.m. It's happening in room 203 of the Jack Purcell Community Centre, 320 Jack Purcell Lane (at Elgin), Ottawa.

If you're in or near Ottawa, come check out the fair. Please come by our table, introduce yourself to our staff (Editor-in-Chief Monica S. Kuebler and Literary Editor Jeff Cottrill), and perhaps buy one or more of our titles.

We have amazing new chapbooks by Steve Vernon and Kate Leadbeater, as well as our 2008 Bram Stoker Award-nominated chapbook General Slocum's Gold by Nicholas Kaufmann, and our other previous titles by Gemma Files, Brett Savory and Gord Zajac, Adebe D.A., Timothy Carter and more...

And if you have friends or family in Ottawa, tell them to come out!
Support underground literature, wherever it is...

Toronto Star: "Ban [in Ontario] on smoking in cars with kids approved"

You're gonna call me a fascist, but I kind of agree with this.
Maybe I have a bias in that I remember a lot of road trips with my parents to visit relatives, during which they always smoked inside the car -- and they refused to open any of the windows because they didn't like the breeze.

So I was trapped in the car for one to three hours each time with my parents' cigarette smoke.
And with their bickering, too, but that hasn't been outlawed yet.

Today is the kind of day in which you're too hot when you wear your jacket and then too cold after you take it off.

I'm going to England again in two weeks, and I feel totally unprepared. In spite of the fact that I've been planning the trip for six months, or at least the spoken-word-tour part.
Lots of unrelated things to do before then, though. I'm having another CouchSurfing couple staying over for two nights this week; this time they're from Germany, and evidently are completely fluent in English. (Maybe I'll practise my Deutsch with them, if I can remember any.) Then it's Ottawa again this coming weekend, for their Small Press Fair. Also reading potential stuff for Burning Effigy, and one feature in Mississauga two nights before I leave.

The couple from France is over, they're sleeping on my futon in the other room. We went out for dinner with a friend of theirs who's staying at a hostel. They went to Niagara Falls this afternoon, and tomorrow they're going to see the CN Tower and wander the business district and High Park.
They're adorable. Their English is limited, and my French is competent but far from fluent, so there's been a fair amount of mime going on. Fortunately, I have a French-English dictionary, so that's been handy for whenever we get really stuck on a word.

They're completely enchanted with my apartment's view. Buildings higher than ten floors are still quite the novelty to them, especially the boyfriend. (They're living in Montreal for a year on a visa, but planning to go on an extensive road trip across the U.S. in the fall.)

They also get excited every time they spot a squirrel, of which there aren't many in Europe.
Pronouncing the word "squirrel", though, is a different story. "Skee-rowl? Skawawarull?"

Somehow I remember this video being a lot more violent and bloody than it actually is.

And somewhat less retarded.
But then, I thought Frankie Goes to Hollywood were musical and artistic geniuses when I was ten years old.

(The two men fighting it out in the cockfighting pit are supposed to be Ronald Reagan and then-Russian president Konstatin Chernenko. Believe it or not.)

My original plan last night was to go to the last WordStage reading (and I still made the after-party later), but then I got an invite to a free preview screening of the new Get Smart movie.

I thought it kind of sucked. Frankly. I like Steve Carell, and there were some funny bits and lines involving him, but the best gags are already in the trailers. I wasn't surprised that it sucked. It was just a dumb formulaic action flick from the old "Hollywood is running out of ideas, so let's just recycle our old ones" file.
Vijay, with whom I went, liked it better than I did, but summed it up perfectly: "Wouldn't that have been amazing if it had been more like the TV show? Or if Steve Carell's Maxwell Smart had had anything to do with Don Adams' Maxwell Smart?" Now, I haven't seen the TV show since I was a teenager, and don't remember it too well, but even then I had to agree. The sensibility was way off; indeed, it was hard to believe that Mel Brooks and Buck Henry had earned credits as the movie's creative consultants. If I remember right... wasn't the TV series more, um, satirical? Wasn't it more of a parody of silly spy movies, rather than a real silly spy movie with humour tossed in? Tell me if I'm way off here.

Speaking of movies, Roger Ebert posted this in his Answer Man column last week:
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I agree with Ebert's general gist here: cinema, when at its best, is the best empathy machine. For example, you wouldn't want to know a psycho like Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle in real life, but the film shows you everything from his point of view without judging him, and you learn why he is the way he is and does what he does.

And I gotta hand it to a 14-year-old who's already discovered classic films.
Funny thing, though... Ebert mentions "maturity" as a prerequisite for appreciating great films. I've preferred classic movies to mainstream hits since my late teens (although I still try to keep an open mind towards the mainstream), despite the fact that people are always telling me I'm immature, shallow and small-minded. Maybe movie taste isn't exactly the best measure of personality strengths.

Day job is driving me batty these days, and other commitments are using up time, so haven't had much time to post. Here's a quick recap of the past few days...

Saturday: Small Press Fair with Burning Effigy. Great new venue with air conditioning, and great turnout. We did well in sales in the first hour or two, then it slowed down. Which is the opposite of almost every other fair we do, in which it starts off slow and later picks up. Later on, I went to the birthday thing of a poet I know, and only knew one other person there. Went to a swing-dancing event, learned a few new steps, danced amateurishly with birthday girl as well as her pretty friend several times, and surprisingly had a good deal of fun.

Sunday: Ironed. Bought new hat, new belt and new sunglasses. Should've bought new air conditioner instead. Did a bit of reading and going over set for Monday. Hosted first half of WordJam and got a free dinner.

Monday: featured at spoken-word series in Hamilton. This was the first series I'd been to in which the open-mic poets seemed to go on longer than the features: there were a few really awful local poets who evidently hadn't been out to many open mics before, and they just went on and on and on and on. I was the first of the two features and later wished I'd been second, as the majority of the small audience didn't arrive until after my set. I hate when that happens. Nonetheless, they were a responsive audience who laughed a lot. They were also quite generous with the donations, so the evening was financially profitable in spite of the fact that no merch sold.

Tuesday: dropped by the Art Bar to hand out flyers. That's about it.

CouchSurfing is working out better... I now have free places to stay in Manchester, Sheffield, Reading and Stratford-upon-Avon next month. I'm also working on Liverpool.
Of course I've had some requests to stay with me as well, and I've accepted a few because it's only fair. On Saturday I'm hosting a nice-looking couple from France for one night. The boyfriend's written English is competent but a little fractured. His first e-mail had the subject heading, "demand of couch surfing". He was obviously thinking of the French verb demander, meaning "to ask for", but it still amused me.

He also mentioned that this is their first time in our city and they "want to visit the Toronto CN and everything".

Hey book lovers:
Burning Effigy Press (burningeffigy) is having its next launch party this Sunday night to celebrate the release of two terrific new chapbooks:

-- Nothing to Lose, a story collection by horror author Steve Vernon that offers new twists on the superhero genre
-- Poems for Addiction, Sex and Sanity by local poet Kate Leadbeater, whom you might recognize from the Toronto Poetry Slam

There will be additional readings by past and future Burning Effigy authors, including (former eye movie critic and award-winning horror writer) Gemma Files, Cynthia Gould, Timothy Carter, Mike Bryant, Dale Percy and more!

Sunday, June 15, 7:30 p.m.
The Savannah Room, 294 College Street (back room)
No cover
More info at www.burningeffigy.com

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