Let’s make a stack of books!
A Year in Reviews – Call for writers – Deadline: Feb 11 | Anchorless Press
Just posted an FAQ section if you are curious what this review call is all about.
Title credit: The Weakerthans, Anchorless
One of the super-fun amaza-crazing things about being an aunt — getting to pick the driving-my-nephew-around soundtrack.
Only problem– he gets attached to one song (“NOOOO! the california girl song*!”) and doesn’t want to hear anything else.
(*Breakfast in America, “See the girls in California”, and yes, it’s not the most obvious lyric to pick up on)
Even though I could play him this:
or this: 
or maybe even this:
.
And one day… I’ll have him requesting this:
Title credit: Supertramp, Breakfast in America
I may have just purchased this:
So I could hear this:
Mostly because of this:
Which was recorded for this album. And listening to it reminds me of this guy:
dancing around the living room of a certain Hamilton Street apartment I used to frequent.
Back to school time makes me miss Rochester a little. Moving to Toronto makes me excited about finding terrible records for 99cents at the Goodwill. Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah yeahyeah!
Title credit: Toronto, Daddy Don’t Know
12 Things that make me feel better, right now:
2. Wearing my papa’s painting overalls and finishing up a cottage painting blitz for the evening.
3. The Five Stairsteps coming up on my shuffle at exACTly the right moment.
4. Toronto address, phone number and a plan that doesn’t cost 80cents a minute!
5. Festival of 24 Things: 401 Edition!
6. Shooting stars at the end of the dock and the Vaccuum Cleaner constellation. And nighttime sweaters.
7. The Weakerthans at the Red Dog!
8. Staying up late, ’cause that’s what you do when you are wearing the painting overalls (flashback to undergrad painting class, when I stayed up all night painting in my studio, wearing the overalls)
9. Leonard and Joni, back-to-back.
10. Cool haps at my former school alma mater (oooh, someone has a few letters after their name).
11. Finding one more roll of Kodachrome in my messy bedroom.
12. A blog post sounding like it’s going to end with the Mastercard phrase: “Priceless”.
Title credit: The Five Stairsteps, Oooh Child.
Canadian Actor Maury Chaykin Dies at Age 61.
On his goddamn birthday.
Best known for his role in the 1990s Canadian drama Street Legal (i kid, i kid) – he’s played Harvey Weinsteingard in Entourage, Desmond Howl in Whale Music (for the Canandiana nuts and Rheostatic superfans out there), along with 151 other entries on IMDB.
Not surprisingly, CBC and The Globe and Mail did the Toronto-based actor a little more justice than the ol’ rag published in his birth state. So it goes. You can’t go home again.
I have no idea why I saved a draft of an almost empty post a year ago – but I did. It had this link in it though: Great Flag Debate – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. So, Happy Canada day y’all, eh! (Canamericadian) I tagged it “Campbellford, Car, Chairs,Will Ferrell.” Curious. Glad WordPress keeps track of these things.
If you are in upstate NY this week(endish) check out the photo book symposium at Visual Studies Workshop. It’s gonna be prime time. (I’ll get it to catch on, just wait and see). Mike Mandel & Ron Jude tomorrow! (And a screening of the Robert Frank flick I used to sneak into the rare book room just to stare lovingly at the metal canister it was housed in.) And did I mention that it’s gonna be prime time?!
Title credit: Silver Jews, Random Rules
Sometimes I hear a song at *just* the right moment and it takes on a whole lot more baggage than most beautiful catchy little songs deserve.
Broken Social Scene – World Sick, via Untitled Records
Getting pushed around, pushed out, looked over, passed over, knocked into, knocked around and just flat out ignored can make you incredibly incredibly world sick. I’m glad someone came up with an appropriate term for it. Since I’m not quite young enough to write another Eff You letter to the world, I’ll just keep trying to dodge the d-bags and flying feces, reminding myself that there a lot of insanely great things in this world, and in the oft-quoted words of the 69-yr-old icon, keep on keepin on.
Yes, it is.
{Via John @ 5P4RK, via Canadian Design Resource}
Shotgunreview.ca is one of my favourite feeds to skim when I am looking for something distinctly, but not obnoxiously Canadian. Bill Rodgers work is heart stopping and Kim Neudorf has a great review of his autumn exhibition at Skew Gallery.
Kim Neudorf’s Shotgun-Review.ca: Bill Rodgers at Skew Gallery
The books we encounter and live with, particularly the antique or flea-market find, eventually take on a knowingness and even a gaze. These books not only link to the past but link to the moment of the find, unexpectedly reactivating traces of ourselves. The statement for Bill Rodgers’ recent exhibition Studies in Citizenship echoes the ceremonial, austere presence of his chosen subject: the early 20th century reference book for rural Canadians. These books evoke a “rigor of self-reliance”, declaring themselves through modest covers and “self conscious and distilled” titles which suggest the boundaries and necessity of their contents.
Title credit: Joel Plaskett Emergency, True Patriot Love
I have had an enormous design crush on Todd Falkowsky since coming across a Becker’s post by the (also very design crushworthy) Hannah Wise on the Canadian Design Resource.
He is still making cool things, and now he’s forming young pencil-propped design minds as well.
Go see his pick for this year’s colour. {Oh WordPress, quit trying to correct my perfect spelling.}
Also, if you are a Canadian designer (or a Canada-based designer) and you are going to be in Toronto on May 30 — email me ASAP. I have some exciting top secret project news to disperse, and I’m looking for participants. Ones who understand why this is funny:
Title Credit: The Mountain Goats, Pale Green Things
Ed. Note: Thank you Hannah for catchin my Becker’s blip 😉 You two design-fiends keep doin what you are doin – CDR should be on everyone’s radar rss feeds.
stuff maker, pen taker, art breaker, math faker 
