barbara streisand as the altered beast

I can’t not share this song with you guys.  I found it on hypem.com which is well, a popularity contest between obscure remixes and bands.  It’s based on wicked music blogs with um, ballin’ style.  And lots have free downloads if you follow the links. YEY. Anyway, this song is called The Altered Beast by Ghost Train (Poka Remix). On repeat, guys. Like, mind-exploding repeat.

click me to listen

You know, I’m still fascinated by people who aren’t plugged in to their passions. Like – I feel like I know quite a bit about the magazine/writing industry for my age (I don’t want to throw up from patting myself on the back or anything), but I do! I RSS like a million magazines that I could potentially submit work to, I read these magazines, I follow writers and writing job postings on twitter and I write for a job “ezine,” as well as keeping up to date on trends and skills that I should stay current with. I have a tagged writing folder on my internet tabs that deal specifically with contests and other money-grabs. And yet, I haven’t applied to many of these things, submitted any work, or given much thought to any of them. I know I could, and if I put the time in I’m sure I could score SOMETHING (perhaps even with money in the deal!), but I don’t. Maybe not having a stable job will force me to be more pro-active about this stuff.

The reason I bring up this obsessive mindset of mine (which I’ve had ever since having a giant panic attack in grade 11 after missing the university fair and “not being in the know” about things I wanted/needed to know for my future), is that I kind of get on my boyfriend’s case about it a lot. I read a lot of blogs where girls either appear as these perfect, ethereal companions or they acknowledge their weaknesses and self-mock in order to humanize it all.  Personally (I don’t know how I could impersonally prefer something, but just deal with my cliché for a sec), I prefer the latter. I’m mad imperfect, just not about knowing stuff that will eventually help me get ahead.  My boyfriend is also imperfect, but in a different way. I always push to know more about whatever I’m stepping in to and he.. I don’t know what he does. I can’t fully say yet, I don’t think. Either way, I should probably climb off that really tall horse of mine and let the dude do his thing.

It’s just funny because I always talk to people about doing this and doing that, and I’m at the point where I’m tired of being scared of working on things and sending them out. I’m tired of not getting rejected. At least rejection is progress. At least rejection is experience. Knowledge is, yes, incredibly helpful and I’m sure (or hoping) that it will make my path more cobbled with nice, Italian marble, but in the end, nothing will help me except sending out work, getting my name published, getting my words published, and getting my portfolio looking like a nice, multicultural lasagna.

That metaphor didn’t exactly do what I wanted it to, but I want to commemorate its strangeness and remember it forever, so I’m forced to leave it there.

I’m pretty sure you get what I mean anyways, so I’ll just leave it at that.

ALSO:

BARBARA STREISAND

PS. I am still waiting for my watch (my soon-to-be-baby) to arrive via UPS. Bring me my baby!

PPS. It is my last day of work at the bar. This might get me out of my February Funk. I have high hopes.

mama oh mama, where have we been

love his look down her back, love her hands; love everything about this intimacy

I really need to back up my computer.  It would be great to get an external hard drive for Christmas, Santa.  Because otherwise, all of my photos/poetry/school work will vanish from the past 3 years.  That will not be fun. I will not enjoy that in the least.  And I figured, 2012 is coming up, right? So it’s only sane to back your shit up.

Here’s the song I’m listening to while packing for Cuba + not studying for my Grammar exam.

My grammar exam is tomorrow at 7 pm.  Who schedules an exam for my prime thinkin’ time? Oh that’s right, my university.  They’re mind-readers.  And I’m going to read THEIR minds and their exams and own that shit regardless.

Basically I have no time to pack so I am packing when I don’t have time. I’ve been buckled under finishing this semester and falling out of windows and being bitten by parrots and whatnot.  I’ve been out there inhaling deep all of the snow that’s been falling.  I actually love it a lot this year (for now) and because I don’t have to be outside when I don’t want to be I am content with the view I have from the inside of my house.  It makes me think about all the people that do not have this view, and all the room we have in this giant house of ours (in comparison).

Among other things.

I’m bringing my camera to Cuba so I hope to get some interesting pictures, and BOOKS. Oh god, I’m never going to fit everything that I need to bring.  But I guess that goes in my carry-on, which is one of those “gym bags” but about as big as your torso.  That counts, right? And a purse.

I’m cute so that makes me hope they bend the rules for me.  I’m not as cute as I was before Friday, since I now have a giant “war gash” above my lip, but you live and you learn. (Or not.)

Regardless, I now have a good story.

THIS is also a great song.  It makes me want to drink absinthe or something.  Instead of read about grammar. I guess I should stop listening to it, but “when everything, is SAID and DONE, and looking for answers, you’re the only ONE – untz untz untz UNTZ untz untz untz UNTZ” !!W!@#!

Yeah, that’s how I feel about good techno beats “!!W!@#!” GOT IT?  I was almost going to write beets there, but then… BAZINGA.

Go watch the Big Bang Theory if you haven’t and you don’t know why I just said BAZINGA.

I’m going to go rock out with my c*** out, so to speak.

I hear the quaintest ladies are saying such things now – what an abomination! What a sin!

What a wonderful life. (Untz UNTZ UNTZ!)

-Arina

canadian music is AWESOME. yes, that is the title.

Out of all of my opinions on things that sway back and forth and take hits to the gut after long conversations, the one thing that will not waver is my love for very specifically crafted Canadian music.  If anything, this is a nation of lyricists with much too time and too few listeners.  And I’m not talking about Shania Twain (although that WAS the first album I ever bought in Canada at the tender age of 7…), I’m talking about real people, prairie people, van city people, halifax people that come from small families and large families and fucked up families and make life so much more worth living.  I’m going to profile 3 specific bands here, because I’ve seen 2 in real living colour and the last I just discovered and am now possibly frustrated at my inability to have discovered him before.  (Of course I could go on about Broken Social Scene and the Stars [whose new song Fixed is totally amazing - get it here], but they are more known than these guys, and I’m all about the break-through bands. Plus, what they have is a lot more music than the storytelling that I fell in love with in these bands.)

The first, and the one band I’m going to see tonight (at the Garrison! In Toronto! Come! Your life will take on new meaning, I swear.  It’s way better than writing papers or doing assignments. Really.) is, of course, The Fugitives.  If you live in Canada and are not opposed to Canadian-like things (some people are, I don’t know…) well, they are it.  They are not maple syrup, they are not beavers or Iqaluit, but they are certainly an explosion of fucking AWESOME. That’s it.  Barbara Adler, Brendan Mcleod (I have his CD and he has a recording on it of a story in which he tells of an awkward first date that SHARTED in his car on his leather seats.  Clearly this is a token to his legitimacy,) Adrian Glynn and Steve Charles.  I haven’t met the last two, but hopefully will see them tonight at least.  Anyway, I’m not going to give you their bio – you can read, can’t ya?, and if you’re curious feel free to go to their website that I linked on their name.  They also have a myspace, a twitter and various facebook accounts that you can damn well go find on your own.

Anyway, these guys are so …… stunna stunna.

They’re kind of spoken word poet songwriter storytellers.  They are incredulously funny live and incredibly emotional in song.  Sometimes you wonder why nobody has thought of the word combinations that they use before, because they seem to fit to things so well.  Listening to them is like being in a whole other universe where life is strung together in one fantastically orgasmic and dance-enducing song.  Plus look how cute they are.  They’ve dropped several people from their lineup over the years, one of whom I will go on to profile next: Mark Berube.  (I should say that having had CR Avery in the band isn’t a bad accolade to their name, either.)

Adoooo-wable right?

Anyway, so – Mark Berube.  I totally just discovered this guy today, and well… it was obvious to me that he was in The Fugitives.  Obvious.  Compare the two, I dare you.  But really, when I listened to his song Flowers on the Stones (you can download it here) I just fell in love.  How could you not? It makes you want to dance.  And write.  And write and dance at the same time.  It’s folk and it’s country and his VOICE rawrrrrrrr oh my. It’s just something so… uplifting.  ”Stand up! Now put your hands up”… the simplest lines of the freaking universe, but with that harmony?  And those voices just kill you in the best way.  I get really hyperventilate-y when I start talking about music I love and stop making sense, did you guys notice that yet?  I’m not using any fancy words at all – just “awesome”.    What else needs to be said though, really? I like the downloaded version because it’s more clear than the live version here, except, you know, if I heard it live I think I would faint.  Or dance.  Probably dance.  A LOT.

Now, maybe this sort of music isn’t your cuppa tea, but give it a chance.  No, their voices are most certainly not that of Beyonce and/or Lady Gaga or Lil’ Wayne and Ludacris, but COME ON the lyrics?  The lyrics, the melodies, the stories.  They’re worth it.  And even their voices give it a certain something – it’s real voices, not digitally remastered for your auditory pleasure, but reallfully mastered for your enjoyment.  That’s totally a sentence I’m going to use in an essay one of these days…..

Photoboooth!

Anyway, Berube’s cronies – Patrick Dugas, Amelie Mandeville and Kristina Koropecki – are called The Patriotic Few for a reason, are they not? Canada rocks.  It rocks because of these guys! How can you not be patriotic when such wonderful people live here.  Such wonderful stories are written here.

Listen, I know I’m not making too much sense here, but once you do a little youtube skip-a-song-play-a-song with these guys you will fall AS madly and AS quickly in love with them as I have.  My suggestion? Start here.  This is what my English/Creative Writing teacher showed me in grade 12, and from then it began.  It’s also just AWESOME.

How many times have I said AWESOME in this post? Probably not enough.

Also, this post is tip-toeing the line of 1000 words, wheres I need to write an essay 1.5 times as long by next Wednesday and I haven’t even read the book.  I wonder where my priorities lie….

Now, the last artists that I wanted to spread the word about is Mad Violet [ Madison Violet ].  And clearly, as I’m now trying to find all the right sites to link you guys to, I find out that they’re playing in Toronto TONIGHT, the SAME night as the Fugitives.  But it would be wrong to not see the Fugitives, right guys? I haven’t seen them yet!  I’ve seen MadViolet already, once last year by accident at I forget what number poetry event…. Okay anyway.  These wonderful femmes are from East Coast Canada, and they’re all cocky and female and taunting and sweet and saucy and guitar-like wonderful.  They’re a little bit more strictly music than the other two but equally wonderful.  Listening to these wonderful souls is like taking a drive in the countryside for some fresh air.  I was going to suggest a song for you guys to listen to but I simply can’t pick just ONE.  So, fine, listen here.

Okay. That’s it.  that’s all I’m going to say.

Except, well, just give these guys a listen, readers.  I promise you won’t regret it.  Even if you don’t listen to them every day (I can’t, otherwise I would just become depressed about the fact that I don’t write nearly enough to get as good as they are, yet), when you pick these songs up from their dusty cases on the right day, it’s like…. it’s right.  Your day becomes brighter.

Your day just… your day improves and you’re like, man! There’s people doing wonderful things out here in the world.

And you just get happy about that, like I am right now. And you stop thinking (for a second, or a song) about things like the leaked video of the pilots in the shooting of the 2 Reuters reporters (and other Iraqi casualties) in Iraq by US planes… makes your blood run cold. And it’s not as though you’re forgetting about that by listening to music like this, it’s that it just takes music like this to convince you that not everyone’s playing video games with peoples’ lives.  That some people care and they make love for a living.  That war is not necessary. That we would all be better to just forget about guns and war and conquering and status.

But those are those opinions that do the swaying in the wind.  The music stays the same.

-Arina

i read too much and write too little

It’s Sunday, and for once my family is doing nothing.  I am writing my Media Critique essay.  It’s coming out pretty easy – I’ve already got two pages written, which is astonishing and incredible and making me ridiculously.. content.  It’s due on the 29th and getting a draft of it done this early is simply a miracle (I tend to do my heaviest work the week prior).  However, this course, and its assignments are pretty incredible in that our professor isn’t insistent on sources and referencing – we focus clearly on the writing and any interesting things we have to say about our topic.  Our writing is what is judged, not our last-minute-cobbled-together-evidence-for-absolute-bullocks-and-has-no-relation-to-the-topic-thesis-or-point-of-the-essay.  That is what I love.  It helps our writing.

And I’ve been doing well in it, so I’m all giggly.

I’m writing the media critique about the show Skins, a british drama comedy about a bunch of pill-popping, smoking, alcoholic brats in grade 11 and 12 (or 6th form as they like to say in England).  It’s incredibly explicit and the filming techniques are realistic about the portrayal of the various situations portrayed in the show, which is a nice contradiction to everything O.C., although I do love me some Peter Gallagher.  Yuuuum-y!

Old school Gallagher.

I’m also going to the semi-finals of Toronto Poetry Slam today – so excited! Just made me remember Brendan McCleod and Barbara Adler from The Fugitives – an amazing Canadian poetry/music/spoken word troupe.  I am basically in an eternal state of jealousy-induced awe for these guys, and when I listen to their songs (and the fact that they can memorize them a-stounds me) I just feel awfully guilty about not writing more and not being better and not caring enough about my writing to make it get THAT great.  I know it can be.  Eventually.  But I also feel like writing grows with you, and I am most definitely not done growing yet, so I have some time left, unless I die tomorrow or whatever.

All of a sudden, after listening to Gallagher’s take on “Don’t Give Up on Me” (you can listen too if you click on his name earlier in the post), I listened to Solomon Burke’s original, which is of course, better by inches.  But I mean, it’s Solomon Burke.  This guy is becoming fused to Toni Morrisson for me right now, simply because of the book that I finished reading for english class, called Song of Solomon.  Not only do they have the same NAME (coincidence? or FATE?), but because of his style of music, his voice, his content – especially the song, None of Us Are Free, which I remember listening to as a little kid on my dad’s CDs.  Goddamn I miss this man and his voice.  I just… I want to make sweet sweet love to this man’s voice.

As Ms. Jillian Christmas says, “like all the right kinds of wrong.”  :) (A fantastic spoken word poet from my very own living-place of Markham.)

Anyway, I should go bugger off and do something interesting.  As you can see I’m bursting full of useless references and facts.  I’m sure this is something I’ll carry into a ripe old age and frustrate the hell out of my grandkids about, much like my own grandparents.

Cheerio, and have a good end to the weekend!

-Arina

and i believed her then

So, I don’t know if you don’t know about Beirut (capital of Lebanon? city in France? name of band?) but you better know, if you know what I know.

My Night With a Prostitute in Marseilles (Free Here) is another one of the many reasons that I love. Beirut. Really? Marseilles? That’s just……

Classy.

Also, a few days ago when I was home (I think it was Monday, because I really haven’t been home all that much lately), I was sitting watching tv shows in my living room, bundled up in a blanket, and I was sitting comfortably, arms resting crossed across my body, my hand gently cupping my right breast in the most natural of positions….. wait.  See, that would be normal if my uncle hadn’t walked in on me watching a tv show and holding my right boob in the middle of the afternoon, but no, now it has to get all weird, with the deer eyes (me) and the ignoring of what he OBVIOUSLY noticed (him) and the inconspicuous (not) jerk away of my hand as though it suddenly realized it wasn’t supposed to be attached to me.   Totes natural.  I played it cool. I swear.

My life doesn’t even know what the word awkward means, really.

Also, Corinne Bailey Rae’s new album The Sea is bomb-diggity.  My favourite is Paper Dolls for now, with Blackest Lily (her voice is like illegally soothing) coming in second, but I haven’t given it a good enough listen yet.  I’m not sure where I got it but I’m sure it was illegal.  *cough* I mean, I uhh, got it from a friend. The smug femme fatale meets soul singer = I’d do her. (See, I’m totally making “classy” a trend here.)

Tomorrow is brunch with the femmes…. and then sadly I’m off to work early to commemorate a great bar patron that passed away this past Sunday.  I’m working the wake. Is that weird? I kind of thought so too.  We’ll see how it goes.

Sunday is going to be ace, but we’ll get to that when we get to it.

Enjoy the silence, (thanks Depeche!)(And Rumi?)

-Arina