By the way, Queenie is still FUMING that someone in Frank's mailcommed her and called her taste in music anodyne. She is considering having it out with said music snob extraordinaire by way of the next article. But she is not sure of the protocol of a Frank's fisticuffs. Can you just go straight for the eyes, or the cochlears possibly, or do you have to be all louche and offhanded about the whole thing, whilst amazingly perceptive about Ukrainian belching music.
Please tell me it's the former.
Anyways...
Top Ten Purchased Albums
In no particular order, but that in which they came to me through the shuffle dream
Bloc Party: Silent Alarm
Kate Bush: Aerial I and II
Kuma: Fast Colliding
Mercury Rev: The Secret Migration
Bruce Springsteen: Devils and Dust
Rufus Wainright: Want Two
Elliot Brood: Ambassador
Colin Hay: Going Somewhere
Madonna: Confessions from a Dancefloor
Doves: Some Cities
Top Five Gigs of 2005
Again in no particular order, but as they came to me in a sweetgrass dream.
Mercury Rev, in Vicar St., Dublin. In March sometime, because it was near Trish’s birthday.
Buck 65, in Whelans, Dublin, the night before I moved to Canada, so it was 7th June. And he was late.
Afirorampo, ATP second weekend. A cold weekend in April/ May. And I drove a car in England for the first time. Much to everyone’s horror.
Elliot Brood, The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto ON, on my second night in Canada, so work that one out yourselves.
Kuma, the Bovine Sex Club, Queen St., Toronto. The other gig of the year as far as I’m concerned
Top Five Films
Once more in no particular order but the way I remembered them, which appears to be the order in which I saw them. Hooray!!
The Republic of Love, dir. Deepa Mehta
Set in Toronto, a film version of the Carol Shields novel. A good adaptation of the novel. I saw it the day my visa came through, so I spent most of the film looking at the buildings in the background.
Garden State, dir. Zack Braff
Zack Braff does the chemical dependency thing and then is saved by a mysterious yet beautiful woman. A funny take on a boring genre. And a good soundtrack.
Mysterious Skin, dir. Gregg Araki
Sexual abuse survivors survive differently and finally come to terms with their experience by talking about it together. Healing ensues.
Pretty nasty film, but very impelling.
Water, dir. Deepa Mehta
This Hindi-language film, set at a ghat in Benares/ Varanasi in India, highlights how widows were treated (and still are in some provinces such as Bihar) by the Hindu religion.
Brokeback Mountain, dir. Ang Lee
Even cowboys get beard rash.
Ang Lee explores the male psyche with his usual quiet style. And the scenery is amazing, it was filmed in Alberta.
And there’s a bear in it. Scary one at that.
The worst film by a long ways was Elizabethtown, but it had a good soundtrack.
Top Five Reads
After a year during which I read not one book to completion, I found my ability to read till the book slips from my hand again, much to my relief.
Four of these books are by Canadian authors. In fact, most of the books I have read this year are deliberately Canadian. Buy Canadian fiction. It’s fab!!
The Memory of Running, by Ron McLarty
I already reviewed this last year.
The Wreckage, by Michael Crummy
A young Newfoundland Catholic finds the love of his life in a Protestant village, only to be separated from her when they are caught ‘at it’ by her mother.
He goes to fight in South East Asia in WWII and ends up in a POW run by a Japanese Canadian with a penchant for sadism. She waits, and waits, and waits.
Three Day Road, by Joseph Boyden
Isaac and Elijah are Cree hunters who join the Canadian forces in 1915, and are sent to fight on the Ypres Salient and later the Somme. They become expert snipers and spend most of their time in no mans land waiting for a kill. When Elijah returns broken and addicted to morphine, Elijah’s Auntie, who escaped from a residential school on the reservations as a child, uses all her renowned shamanic power to save him from the evil spirits within.
An Audience of Chairs, by Joan Clark
Moranna McKenzie is a bipolar sculptor living in isolation in Northern Cape Breton. Her bastard journalist husband took her children away when she became ill. Moranna starts every day playing an imaginary piano concerto to an audience of chairs.
Sweetness in the Belly, by Camilla Gibb
The story of Lilly, an orphaned European, who is raised by a Sufi philosopher in Morocco and sent to Ethiopia, to Harar. When Mengistu takes over, she is evacuated to London and begins the search for her lost love, Dr. Aziz. In the meantime, she co-parents Amina’s children and begins to trust others after a long period of isolation.
2005’s Five Best Days
- Trish and Keith’s wedding day
- Tuskett Lake, New France, last weekend of the summer
- The day I spent exploring Toronto and it bucketed rain
- The afternoon I spent in the courtyard at ATP
- The day I discovered New York’s 8th St and its 67 shoe shops.
Five things I did this year that I’ve never done before.
- Saw a whale
- Moved to Canada
- Delivered 63,000 kgs of poplar logs to a photo-paper mill in Northern Alberta. (not by myself obviously).
- Lived beside the sea properly
- Started a blog. It's Percy’s Depressed’s first anniversary on Tuesday, by the way, boys and girls, if you have any thoughts on how Queenie should mark it.
I suppose an appearance from the man himself would be in order. Oh, I wonder where he is....
At least it's pretty obvious who our overlords of darkness are now.
2 comments:
Frank's is like ultimate fighting - no real rules other than not kicking someone if theya re down and defenceless - even then its open season if they actually leave the APA - some people are still a source of mockery decades later.
Whats Franks?
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