More good stuff

This week is full of good things I can recommend in a quick list, which is good because this week is also scant on time for me to write longer blog posts. So enjoy the fruits of others' labours:

Annabel Lyon does 12 or 20 with rob mclennan (have I mentioned recently how much I love this series?)

The Hart House Players' outdoor production of Romeo & Juliet runs until Saturday and is highly highly recommended. The spot on Philospher's Walk is beautiful and even you know the Walk, you probably haven't been there before (I hadn't--there's a grassy park on top of flight of cement stairs!) Also, and most importantly, the cast as amazing, free and relaxed and passionate, which is how I like to see Shakespeare. They play the characters young and silly and bawdy, and Mercutio and Benvolio's banter is an especial delight. Another highlight is Juliet, a role that often gets played as a pretty hysteric. Here, Cosette Derome makes the 13-year-old lover human and funny in her giggly ardour, and later in her wretched but wry sorrow. When I looked up Derome in the program, I was surprised-but-not-really to find she'd been in my favourite play of the summer, 36 Little Plays about Hopeless Girls. I wonder what else she's going to be in...whatever it is, I'd watch it!

Steven W. Beattie's desk is now viewable on Desk Space. I also love this series a lot; there are no bounds to my nosiness about fellow writers!

And finally, a while back I talked books and bars with Ian Daffern at the Victory Cafe and Dave Kemp photographed the proceedings. The result is a slideshow feature at Open Book Toronto called Open Bar. I think it's pretty cool.

Ok, now I'm outie for the holiday. Happy Civ--I promise to write something with real paragraphs next week!

Stay with me / go places
RR

Treats and Wonders

Via Scott: Of course I love this gallery of book sculpture because of coolness and ingenuity. Of course I hate it because no one is reading those books. It's very confusing.

Canadian poet (and cool guy) Troy Jollimore had a lovely poem, "At Lake Scogog" in this week's New Yorker.

Once, I told AMT a tale of woe about working very hard on a story for months, only to have the nth draft dissolve in my hands like grains of sand--it was an unworkable idea, but the only way to find that out was the months of work on an unpublishable story for which no one would congratulate me. And AMT, a linguist who regularly runs experiments that are sometimes brilliant and sometimes not, explained to me about a little publications called *The Journal of Null Results*. I said, "Please blog that so we can all feel a little better about things. And she did--I hope you do!

For the glue to dry on our new creation
RR

Rose-coloured Reviews the summer dance hits

Once upon a time, I was sort of the the target demographic for the New Kids on the Block v. 1.0, when the first step was "have lots of fun" and no one cared that there weren't really any other steps--because it was silly spun-sugar fun, that's why. Those were decidedly *not* the days--I was peer-pressured into spending my limited funds on magazines that had centrefolds and almost no text (it was tween porn!)--but, well, c'mon, "Hangin' Tough" may not have been a good song but it was a *fun* song, especially if you were 11.

And then the New Kids on the Block v 2.0 released the worst song ever written. Seriously, "Dirty Dancing"? That's a movie--any chance of those words meaning anything else to the target demographic v 2.0 of young nostalgia-lovin' females is limited at best. And the homage-lines in the song don't really make the connection clear to me:

Ooo, it's so crazy
She's like, "Baby!"
I'm like Swayze.

Even if you were like Swayze, and I'm not entering that fray (I didn't like that movie very much and only saw it once; go ahead and excommunicate me from the sisterhood of young nostalgia-lovin' females), that's a pretty weak allusion.

Ok, nevermind about the purity of Baby and the gang--this song still sucks. There's barely any build to the purely electronic, extremely repetitious music (can you still it an ostinado if it's an electronic loop?). You can totally see that this was designed for the late nights in the club; it basically sounds like a slow grind for closing time. And the lyrics really play to that "desperate drunk female" demographic, who could possibly construe

with her pretty lips
"and her big old hips
...
and her pretty eyes
and her big old thighs"

as romantic sweettalk. Damn straight, "forget about romancin'."

Oh, and did I mention that this song about a guy getting with someone at a club while his

girl is at home
she's been blowing me up on my phone
but I can shower when I get home
because tonight I'm dirty dancing.

I hate this song more with every rotation of the earth. And who in NKOTB has a Hispanic accent, anyway?

***
FloRiDa (and Kesha) have adapted Dead or Alive's decidedly Eighties dance-club who's-zoomin'-who love story, Right Round into a decidedly Aughts strip-club who's-for-sale love storyby the same title. Yep, the narrative here is the tale of a young gentleman trying to seduce (I think) a pole-dancer by giving her lots of money (which isn't exactly seduction, but...)

And yet...I sorta like this song. Ok, no *major* points for respecting women, but Kesha gets to sing the chorus too, which is, to me, a slightly witty update on the Dead or Live lyric, "You spin me right round baby right round like a record baby right." I think DoL's metaphor was pretty straightforward, and people (ok, people like me) are so familiar with those words that it takes a minute to get the wrinkle in FloRiDa's update: "You spin my head right round (right round) when you go down (when you go down down)." You have to think about that one--not hard, I admit, but this a second when you don't see it, and then you do and that's good for a smile.

So, the fact that Kesha gets equal opportunities to sing the wink-nudge chorus is not really this the best argument for this song. But it is catchy (thank you yet again, 1980s), and the catchy semi-clever chorus is contrast with the fast, rat-a-tat rhymes (though said rhymes are not especially clever, they sound good when rapped fast:
She's amazin'
her fire blazin'
hotter than Cajun
Girl, why don't you move a lil closer?
It's time to get paid
it's maximum wage
that body belongs on a poster"

And it's totally dancable, in an upbeat, only slightly sexy way.... I've come to the conclusion, writing this review, that it's embarrassing that I like this song, but I do. I'll probably have forgotten it by September, which is likely best for us all.

***
I Gotta Feeling by the Black-Eyed Peas suceeds on all the necessary fun-club-tune metrics: extremely simple concept, hummable chorus, solid thumping beat, sense of—if not humour—at least fun.

"I got a feeling that tonight's gonna be a good night" is the nicest thing in the world to hear when someone grabs your hand and pulls you out the door. And though I lost count of how many times that line is repeated in this song, it never (really) loses its charm. Maybe because it starts out being sung by just one guy, but eventually all the Peas (I have no idea how many there are) start singing in unision, with one or another occasionally breaking away, culminating in this charming call-and-response in the bridge:

Tonight's the night (hey!)
Let's live it up (let's live it up!)
I got my money (paid!)
Let's spend it up (let's spend it up!)
Go out and smash it (smash it!)
Like oh my god (like oh my god!)
Jump off that sofa (c'mon!)
Let's kick it
Off
Fill up my cup (drank!)
Mazel-tov (l'chaim!)
Look at her dancing (move it move it!)
Just take it off!
Let's paint the town (paint the town!)
We'll shut it down (shut it down!)
We'll burn the roof (whooo!)
And then we'll do it again...

Ok, it's no Emily Dickinson, but I find it witty (ahaha, "l'chaim" for drank--at last!) and so friendly with all the voices weaving in and out. Ok, "take it off"--not totally PC, but considering how buried the line is, I'm willing to ignore it.

But really, that's not how one should evaluate a dance hit! This song is fun because it's *simple*--easy-cute devices like listing the days of the week with Saturday twice, suddenly accelerating the tempo, and making the whole thing seem like an invitation to the listener--"Let's paint the town!" "I Gotta Feeling" is my favourite dance hit of the summer so far, and even the fact that Fergie goes to a club in a bikini in the video can't make me feel back about this one.

Rose-coloured reviews will not be addressing the "shorty fire on the dancefloor," and we are very disappointed in you, Sean Kingston.

And then we'll do it again
RR

PS--I really like transcribing song-lyrics (I think it makes me more sensitive to vocal nuance, blah blah blah) and did all these myself instead of looking them up. Feel free to call me on it if I got anything wrong.

Peevish

When I graduated from highschool, we were supposed to write "obits"--little responses to abbreviated questions to squish beside our grad pictures in the yearbook and apparently sum up our personalities and lives in high school and after. The queries were PP: pet peeve, AM: ambition, PD: probable destination and K4: known for. Here's mine (if I were braver I'd scan in the picture; I'm not):

AM: to have one, to be a licensed driver, to blowdry, to reincarnate my fetal pig, to name that smell, to get the fish joke
PD: the bus 4ever, sleeping thru the apocalypse, K.N.'s floor, crushing my rage into a tiny ball
K4: too much hair, "I don't get it...oh, yeah, I do."

Though I did get my license (I corrected the spelling error--"liscenced"!! jeez!!) that's pretty much the same as I would write now, especially the last bit. But you'll note--no PP! At the time, I thought there were no peeves I wished to be remembered by (if you think I'm obnoxiously rose-coloured now, you should've seen high school, especially at intramural badminton!)

So things have changed, as I do have a few peeves now. And as KateN's dissection of a pet peeve has inspired me, here's some headliners from recent peevishness:

--the tap of a fork-tine against tooth enamel
--the rainbow-coloured spinning wheel Macs replace the cursor with when something's not responding
--when people say "How are you?" as an alternative to "hello," without waiting for an answer.
--Cyclists on the sidewalk! oh, my most hated ever, cause it's dangerous and not just annoying!! Like, I get that that many drivers in Toronto are horrible to cyclists, but taking a bike onto the sidewalk is like someone who is pushed around at work coming home and taking it out on their family--sidewalk abuse!! I got clipped by a bike-rearview mirror recently and was so very unimpressed.

Ahem. So, yeah, I get a little more tetchy as I age, I suppose. But I really would love it still if someone would explain the fish joke to me.

I was waitin' for the hot flashes to come
RR

Excitement

I did complain about lack of mail in a previous post, but the fact is I get something interesting, if not something actually personal, almost every day. Of course, it helps that I have signed up for a lot of free-sample mailing lists ("oh, look, a package of egg-salad seasoning/skin cream/energy bars/tampons!") and have a low threshhold for excitement.

At the higher end of the scale, we have yesterday's arrival of the Fiddlehead's Summer Fiction Issue, which contains my stories "Tech Support" and "ContEd" (click the link to see an excerpt, as well as lots of other exciting stuff by Andrew MacDonald, Shane Neilson, Katia Grubisic and many awesome others.

Oh, and while I'm on the topic of myself, and things I'm doing with awesome others, I should mention that on August 19, I'm participating in a Now Hear This! reading, as a part of the SWAT program (that I taught in last spring? remember last spring?) My fine fellow readers include Mariko Tamaki, Colin Frizzell and Andrew Daley. Note the the early start time--6pm! This event is *all ages* and friendly to the hungry, since you can order supper during the readings. Don't get anything crunchy, though, ok?

Yes the heart will always go one step too far
RR

Human beings: still quirky

So, yeah, Toronto's having a municipal workers' strike, the most visible manifestation of which is that garbage isn't being collected (I feel bad calling it "the garbage strike" when hundreds of other city workers are on the picket lines, too). But really, the garbage thing can take over your mind when you stroll certain parts of the city these days.

The funniest thing is, if you look at the picture at the link above, you see that though we are deprived of workers to collect trash and take it to the dump, citizens are not willing to a) hang on to their own garbage and take it to the dump themselves nor b) fling things on the ground and admit to being litterbugs. No, we carefully carry our half-eaten sandwiches and empty coffee cups to a not-in-use-but-overflowing-anyway garbage bin, and lay the trash on the ground in front of it, as if it were a shrine.

I admit, this was something I was doing too in the early days of the strike--I actually attempted to shove a little ice-cream cup into a bin, picked it up when it fell down and tried again until I suceeded. Then, after a few days and some bold new odours, I realized: putting trash anywhere it's not attended to, even it is someplace where it *used* to be attended to, is still littering. I would never just toss a pop bottle in the road--heaven forfend--but the pop bottle I leave sitting in front of one of those big silver bins is going to blow away and roll right into the road, or maybe someone's flowerbed. Some private business have bins out front that they are attending to, and some mutant very posh neighbourhoods seem to have set up some sort of watch, but in general, you just can't throw things away on the street right now.

It's hard to reprogram (and even harder to carry a used Kleenex across town) but garbage bins aren't garbage bins right now. It's an ontological crisis, but the practical fallout is that I am going to take responsibility for myself and my ice-cream cups.

Sorry for the rant. I had a particularly Oreo-bag and pizza-box intensive walk this morning.

Tears the size of Texas / drying all around her neck
RR

An honour and a privilege

I have ever maintained that the short story is thriving, as challenging, fantastic, funny, depressing, thrilling, shocking, entertaining and inspiring stories continue to be produced in this country at a fantastic rate. I read frequently and vigorously--journals and collections and online stuff--and still there's a million things about this tricksy form that I'm trying to understand.

This spring and summer have afforded me some marvelous opportunities to try to learn this craft. The first was teaching grades 10 and 11 to write short stories. Anytime you want to call everything you think you know into question, just try telling it teenagers. Even before the kids started their questions, the act of putting together my thoughts and beliefs about how something ought to work in a story showed me a lot of my limitations, and opened up doors I never knew existed. Of course I want to think that my teaching served the cause of the short story by showing kids how fun it is to try to write them, and how much can be gained by reading them. In addition to that, though, I do think that my own contributions to the genre will be shaped by what I learned from teaching.

The other thing I've been up to lately is acting as a judge for the Journey Prize 21. Obviously, it was a huge honour to be asked to take on this role, but also a huge privilege to get to immerse myself in some of the best work done in the form this year in Canada, and to then to discuss that work deeply with my inspiring fellow judges, Lee Henderson and Camilla Gibb. This was, once again, an opportunity to interrogate what I think of as a "good short story," why I think that, and how that might be limiting.

I plan to write more about this process around the book's release (October 6; the winner will be announced at the Writers' Trust Awards in November). This little post is just to say that I hope you are as excited about the upcoming anthology as I am--it's full of wonderful, challenging, weird, etc. stories that inspired us, and might inspire you, too. And also to say that I think I'm a lot smarter than I was six months ago.

Our still lives posed / like a bowl of oranges
RR

Rose-coloured Reviews The Sleepless Goat Cafe and Workers' Collective

So I spent some time in Kingston, Ontario, last weekend, where there is beautiful water, friendly people, buskerfest, and a lot of waterfront pubs. Kingston also contains the Sleepless Goat Cafe and Workers' Collective. For just a moment when you first see it, you think that an independent cafe right next to a Starbucks would have a hard road. And then you really look at the place, and think it probably has a fairly well differentiated demographic.



Inside is even more non-Starbucksy: pumpkin orange walls, mismatched chairs, a big bookshelf full of oddities, and laidback counterstaff with "equal say in the way the business is run and in the decisions affecting their everyday worklives." (That's a quotation from the SG website explaining the concept of a workers' collective.) The sugar's organic, most of the waste is recycled or composted, and the graffito in the ladies' room (there was only one) says, "Support public libraries," in black sharpie.

So, reading that description, the SG *could* sound a little too crunchy to tolerate, but it's actually just right. On my two visits, the staff seemed genuinely happy to see everyone who came in, and everyone who came seemed happy to be there. And a lot of people came in, and even better, a wide variety. Unlike some allegedly chilled-out cafes, this one didn't seem to admit only deeply attractive people between 19 and 24. There were people with babies, an editor marking up a manuscript, elderly couples in hiking boots, gaggles of twentysomethings playing boardgames, several people with walkers, and of course a few tourists (ie., yours truly). Everyone was polite in accommodating babies, walkers and whatever else, and many seemed to know the staff and each other. So civilized.

Another big difference between SG and Starbucks is that this is a real restaurant, not just a coffee shop that will sell you a stale sandwich for $6 if you really want one. The menu is extensive and would be intriguing looking even it weren't above the counter in day-glo chalk--lots of roasted vegetables, curries and Mexican-inspired stuff. The food is almost entirely veggie, except for the option of bacon or sausage or tomato slices with the "traditional" breakfast. Which actually makes sense; ask anyone who went (semi)veggie for non-taste reasons what they might break down for, and I betcha they'll say bacon.

I had the "non-traditional" breakfast, which is vegan even though I'm not--I just like beans and rice--and my dining companion had the breakfast burrito, so we can pronounce the Mexican-themed breakfasts very good, anyway (if this were a real review, I would have tried a wider variety at different times of day, I suppose). You don't see beans & rice many places in Canada (I found out I like that in Costa Rica) so I really enjoyed my breakfast. Seemed a little over-carbed to serve it with home fries and toast, but whatever. The bread was the "famous" Dakota, which was just a little too full of seeds and grains for my liking, but pretty good none-the-less.

Since I only ate the one meal there (the other day we just had coffee--SG has excellent coffee) I don't know if our long wait for hot food was typical. If one were in a major hurry, there were a bunch of appetizing pre-made salads and sandwiches and muffins in the display case. But it was a comfy place to wait (you order at the counter but the staff serves you at your table--you have to tell them where you plan on sitting!) Also, as a sign by the register indicates, The Goat has games!! So you can sign yourself out the Scrabble board (or something else, I don't know what) and pass the time in that way. On a rainy morning, a Scrabble board is a great gift, even though there were two boards in the box and an usual number of Us, as well as some unidentified food particles. Also, the food is so good as to be worth waiting for.

In short, the Goat is good--go!

Try a little more try a little more
RR

Oh, look!

I don't usually link to blogs that haven't been going for a while, in case they don't continue, but I'm too excited to wait to tell you that The New Quarterly has a blog now, The Literary Type. And really, I have no doubt that TLT will thrive with all the good energy and talent that lives at TNQ behind it, and with their wonderous managing editor Rosalynn Tyo at the helm.

Yay!

The flower said it wished it was a bee
RR

Social Networking, So Much

Before the Rose-coloured blog, before the Facebook obsession and the fear of MySpace, before socializing went virtual, there was the Bureau of People We Know. Well, there was insofar as a thing that had no form or substance but simply got talked about a lot (mainly by me) can be said to have existed. In fact, even before that, there was the chorus of the children's song The More We Get Together, which encouraged you to think of my friends as your friends.

That was really the basis of the BPWK, as I have always wanted to meet my friends' friends, especially around the time I graduated undergrad, and my little circle exploded into different cities and careers and circles, doing all kinds of fascinating things far away where I couldn't see them. So whatever city someone ended up in, I'd name them head of that city's office of the BPWK, their only duty really being to hang out with me when I came to town, maybe introduce me to their other friends, and perhaps hang out with some other friends of mine if they found themselves in the same city.

This was not social networking in the Penelope Trunk sense, where you look for useful people, befriend them and then hope they'll do things for you. My central goal was for no one to ever be bored or lonely in a strange city and to meet as many cool people as possible (and in those senses, I am personally living the dream, at least).

And for the same reason (well, more the meeting cool people part), I am very fond of blogs and Facebook. I often meet someone once at a party, have a charming conversation, and wonder how I'll be able to have another charming conversation with that person without seeming a) like I'm hitting on him/her, b) a potential stalker, and c) socially lame. Facebook offered the answer, a way to get to know a *little* about people who seem cool, and to interact a *bit*, to the point where you might be able to "take it live" and have coffee in a real actual place.

And that makes me very happy. It also makes me happy that I can invite these new friends to parties and readings and be invited to theirs, that they can see my other friends and what we're all up to, and maybe the Bureau of People We Know will enlarge even further.

Social networking websites are not a substitution for personal interaction; they are a method of interacting, albeit in a minor, low-committment way. Which can be a conduit to lots of other things, or just a long-term happy acquaintanceship. Both are good things.

So yay Facebook, yay blog! I never joined MySpace because I thought you needed to have a band, and I never joined Twitter because I thought you needed to have a cellphone... Obviously, I know they'll let you *on* either platform without guitars or a flipphone, but I figured there's be no point; I'm not who it's for. Then a shadowy man told me I could synch my Facebook updates with Twitter, if only I were on Twitter. \

So now I'm on Twitter. Such is my love of FB that the hours in the day when, erm, technical difficulties make updating impossible are sad for me. So now, FB tweeting all the time.

And the bonus, of course, is that I'll get to see who is on Twitter. Besides Wren and Fred and Mel, of course, who are my friends across all platforms, aside from being original members of the BPWK.

Not sick of me yet? Let's be Twitter friends! Or you can just scroll way down on the right side of this blog and see my none-too-fascinating tweets.

Sweet Alexis / is eating fingernails for breakfast
RR

Did I miss anything?

Kingston was lovely, filled with tiny dogs, bizarre bizarre buskers running in hamster wheels and jumping on pogo sticks, friendly American tourists, delicious pizza, and trees ideal for napping beneath. So what did you get up to this weekend?

My 12 or 20 questions (actually, 19!) with rob mclennan is now posted. If you've lost all interest in me, I'd still advise you to check out the series, as so many cool writers confess their thoughts on writing, writers, reading and fruit on it.

Oh, and upcoming, a review of Coming Attractions 08 from Andrew M., whose blog is pretty cool.

Ok, now back to real life, where no one ever juggles flaming clubs or makes my bed for me, and I have do things that don't take palce in sunshine. Even still, I'm rather fond of real life.

If it's all right with you / I'd like to come home with you tonight
RR

Life

This morning, as I planned this post, it was going to be titled "Life is Good", because:

1) the Joyland Joyathon last night was so amazing and fun and funny and well-attended by awesome people (most of the pictures turned out terrible, due to failures of both technology and technician [though they are still available on Facebook, if you feel the need], but here's a decent one of Brian Joseph Davis and Emily Schultz kicking off the festivities:



2) I'm heading to pretty Kingston for the weekend.

3) When I took out the recycling this morning, my eye happened to be drawn to the far end of the alley, where I had never looked before (this is sad, sad, sad, considering how long I've lived in this building and that I'm supposed to have "an eye for detail") and found...a raspberry bush in full fruit! In the alley! I ate several, just to prove to myself I could--delicious!

But then I check out the internet, and found that in the next couple months, Toronto (and the world) will be losing both Pages Bookstore and Seen Reading. All involved will continue to work wonders with books and words in our city (and the world), but this will be a big change for us all, and take some getting used to.

So, yes, life is good, but it's also life, and we struggle to keep up as best we can. Onward. I'll be back in a couple days, with tales of jails and ghosts and Greek food, we hope.

I've been an irresponsible son
RR

Get Joy

Just a reminder that I'll be a part of the Joyland Joy-a-thon, which is part of the Scream Literary Festival. The event starts at 8pm Wednesday at the Stealth Lounge at The Pilot in Yorkville.

Ok, that's the practical details--the impractical ones are a) it's gonna be awesome, b) the first reader is Claudia Dey so don't be late, c) there's cover, but it's PWYC and it's for the awesome cause of a Joyland *tour*, d) it's hosted by Emily Schultz and Brian Joseph Davis so, yeah, awesome, e) I'm one of the very last readers and it's an "athon" so I won't be hurt if you have to go to bed before I take the stage--you should still come out for the other readers and f) there's raffles in which you can win BOOKS!!

I thought you wanted me
RR

Rose-coloured reviews *36 Little Plays about Hopeless Girls*

36 Little Plays about Hopeless Girls is playing at Bread & Circus as part of Fringe Toronto, which means time is of the essence! There's a showing almost daily until July 12 (see the play-title link for schedules) and then that's it--opportunity window shut.

As you might be able to tell from the above, I am suggesting you see this play. Maybe you don't need me to tell you this; it's one of the buzz plays of the Fringe this year, and I heard later it elicited similar delight when it played two years ago Tranzac. I live in a box and the reason I wanted to see it is that my former classmate is in it and she posted it on her Facebook page and I like hopeless girls (empathy). I hadn't even realized the Eye article I posted last time was a cover story until my partner-in-playgoing pointed it out, and suggested we go the $2 surcharge and get advance tickets (which was a good idea, as the show sold out).

So what's so awesome about *Hopeless Girls*? It's smart, it's sharp, and it's funny. It's got whole-cast dance numbers between the little plays that are beyond charming--someone took the time to arrange pop songs (think Hey Ya as Muzak), and to choreograph 30-seconds of movement that really work for a dozen girls on a tiny stage, and they are executed really well--not only does everyone keep time, they look like they're having a ball.


The characters in the plays are having less fun than their performers. The girls aren't hopeless in big dramatic ways--no one's on a quest for alchemy or perfect love or eternal youth. Instead, they are just trying to get noticed by their mothers, get through a work day without anyone being rude to them, survive the commute home. The plays are indeed little and so is the drama contained within them, but that makes the moments of recognition from the audience so bountiful and delightful. I definitely know about the weird way I don't like myself when I squish a bug, how disgusting "other people's ketchup" is, how sometimes I wish I could just lie down on the sidewalk for a minute and catch my breath. And I've heard that *exact* "You really still eat dairy? It's not natural, you know!" comment several times (something that, in me at least, elicits the ironic silent reaction, "Cow!")

I like the exaggerated modesty of the play--even props that could easily have been provided (magazines, hairbrushes) are made of cardboard. The only set is a table and chairs, and those are also covered with cardboard--leading to a semi-magical space, where everything is realistic but not quite real. This is deepened by the characters' long elegant not-quite-real-in 2009 names--Melisande, Antoinette, Effervescence--and the fact that everyone wears a pretty pastel party dress. The disjunct of a club-scene girl sprawled on her bedroom floor complaining about being cold...while wearing a pink summer frock...is funny and somehow poignant.

This modesty belies how professional the production actually is. *36 Little Plays* is flawlessly rehearsed--everyone hits their marks, gets their props in the right place, and manages their entrances and exits smoothly--important details that are often missed in low-budget theatre. And of course I need to emphasize that the writing is extremely tight, too. Each vignette is smart and well-crafted, but the larger play coheres as well, in some strange and fascinating ways. The subtle interweaving of the characters' narratives brought home the notion that a hopeless girl's greatest ally and greatest weakness in times of trouble is...other hopeless girls. The overpowering sense of community towards the end was really interesting.

There is a small quirk to the play, a strange creature named Nifa whose presence, even when eventually explained, made very little sense to me. She only shows up a few times, gives rise to a few good jokes about panel vans, and doesn't really impact the proceedings at all. In fact, the character added so little that I forgot to even mention her in the post-viewing dinner-discussion. It was only the next morning that I was like, "Oh, the hell?" If you see the play and the Nifa strand works for you, I'd be curious to know why. But even if it doesn't, that's a small small matter in a giant work of little plays.

Five days left!

It's good to lay awake all night
RR

What we talk about when we talk about nothing

D: Aspertame isn't really bad for you, you know. That's a myth.

Me: Whew!

A: So how come I get a headache every time I have it?

D: It might be bad for you personally. Some people are allergic to aspertame, but some people are allergic to trees and grass, and I'm unwilling to accept that those are objectively bad things.

J: I'm not so crazy about grass, actually.

Me: I love hearing about what you hate! How can you hate grass?

J: It's all poky! And full of bugs.

Me: I sat on some nice grass this weekend. It was sort of dying, so it was all limp and soft.

A: Dead grass is the most poky. It's like straw.

Me: Dying, not dead. It had just gone limp, but it hadn't dried out yet.

D: It was losing turgor pressure.

Me: Exactly.

J: So that's the secret--almost dead grass. Huh.

I can't believe what they're saying / I can change my mind
RR

Professional Interviews: Mary, assistant manager in a tack shop

Interview #3 in this series, if you are keeping track, still taking advantage of my friends' patience as I am as yet too timid to interview strangers. For urban readers, a tack shop is a saddlery, a place that sells equipment for horseriders, competitive and recreational, and for the horses themselves.

What is your job? I'm in sales, shipping, and I'm assistant manager, 2nd within the chain of command.

How did you get that job? By chance. I was laid off for the winter from the nursery [plants, not babies] that I was working at and my friend who owns a horse farm needed some help because her dad, who usually helped her out in the barn, was having bypass surgery. So while he recuperated she needed a hand and I needed something to do. I worked for her through the winter and summer while looking for another job (I had decided not to go back to the nursery when they asked since they weren't going to give me back my management position).

I called the Saddlery one day while I was working on the horsefarm, since I'd been told by friends I'd be g ood in a tack shop. I was told to come in that day for an interview, which was mainly about horses, and got the job. I started a week before The Royal Winter Fair (RR notes: this is like starting in the Secret Service the week before Obama's inauguration).

A typical shift for me: I get there are 8:45, unlock, turn off alarms, turn on lights (and fans, if it's summer, turn on the Open sign, take sale or feature items out to the porch. And water my plants! Load computers, count change in the till, count out bills to add to the till...then, if no customers have come in, I'll answer any emails that need answers and print off any online orders that need to be filled, check the fax machine for fax orders, check the log book for phone and other orders have come in [since my last shift]. I'll go get the required items from around the store to fill the orders. If large quantities or a large item is require, I'll fax a request to the company warehouse and have them check their stock since it's easier for them (but if they don't have what's needed, I'll pull it from the store). If no one has it, I call the customer to suggest something else. Once an order is filled, I got omy till, look up the customer (or add the info, if they aren't in the system) and run their credit card through. If all goes well, I put the order into shipping and receiving for my boss to take to the warehouse.

I also answer the phone, I set up meetings with suppliers, I sit in on those meetings, take stock of items required to fill the store, and help any customers that need me. But the mail-order takes up the majority of my day.

What makes you good at your job? Knowledge of horses and livestock and the fact that I ride all the time. People don't want and don't trust advice from someone who has no contact with horses. I have very good customer service skills and excellent phone manners. And I know what's going on in the horse world, since I got to shows, know rules and regulations, things like that. Even rodeos.

What sort of person would hate your job? Someone who doesn't know the horse world; they wouldn't be able to give good advice. Someone who doesn't like helping people; there's a lot of 1-on-1. You can't have issues with people who come into the store.

Favourite item in the store? A brand-new Billy Cook barrel saddle, the new design. It has a natural coloured rawhide-wrapped horn and cantle... As opposed to the natural light colour, it's a chestnut. Even the roughout leather on the fenders and jockey skirt are a chestnut colour. It's very comfortable to sit in. It makes me debate whether to trade in my current saddle. But I don't think I will.

Final statement: To ride a horse is to fly without wings!

Culture Clash

Strangely, this year the Toronto Fringe Festival runs from July 1 to 12, while the Scream Literary Festival will run July 2 to 13. Strange because these are both such amazingly awesome weirdy cultural events that appeal to so many of the very same people (both as attendees and likely as volunteers) that you'd think they wouldn't want to compete. But who knows, in the world of schedules and venues, what hardships these two teams suffered from, so all we can do is thank our stars we at least have 2 weeks to jam in as much as we can.

If you held a gun/dayplanner to my head, I'd have to come out for lit over theatre, so I'll be hoping to see you at Stet: Redacting the Redacted, the Joyland Joyathon (well, I'm participating in that!), and of course the big mainstage reading on July 13. But there should be world enough and time to sneak in at least 36 Plays about Hopeless Girls, if not a couple others.

Really, when you have to complain about having too many alternatives for fun, you are really scraping the bottom of the complain barrel. Oh, Toronto, you rule my heart!

Our home and native land
RR

Oh, Canadian spellings

Colour vapour labour odour realize analyze vapourize glamour (but glamorous) jewellery ageing cheque judgment lasagna gonnorhea etc.

I use'em all (unless I forget), out of patriotism and consistency. But you don't really have to. The "our" ones, yes, you'll look American if you skip the "u", but the -ize/-ise ones are more or less your call. The zed is actually the American version anyway; that's what's most common here now, for whatever reason. And no one in the world is going to give you a hard time if you write "jewelry"... A lot of these aren't even really *for sure* the Canadian-ist--they're just the most common I could find.

And what the standard is doesn't really matter, because all spellings of these words are perfectly comprehensible to everyone who speaks English. The important thing is to take a stand on a given family of words and stick with it. It's your personal house style, a chance to show you prioritize nationalism or felicity of word-appearance or whatever does in fact matter to you. If you spell willy-nilly, it looks like you don't care.

Of course you care. Because forget national spellings, we are nation of tidiness and order...no sloppy spellings!

Happy Canada Day, fellow Canadians (and friends-of-Canadians!)

Let's go party

RR