One-eyed Jacks

no trip to Florida would be complete without a bit of weirdness...so i went to the greyhound track that is just down the street from my grandfather's place. (for the record, he does not bet on the dogs!)
i didn't even know dog racing was still legal in the US until i drove past this track. and although i had the worst of expectations, when i went over to the inspection kennel, the dogs were less crazy in the eyes than race horses are.

so the fluffy stuffed animal is sent along the track on a wire...notice the white blur at the guy's feet in the photo...and the dogs chase it. and when they reach the finish line, they get dog biscuits.

overall, though, i still agree with my character Millard, in my novel: "Isn't fair," she says, "betting on a game the horse runs for you. No game in that."

change however flawed

...is still a change to the good.

my god the empire to the south has actually passed the health reform bill!

Canada Also Reads live

just finished a live chat...which scared the bejesus out of me but actually was fun (kind of hard to stay nerve-wracked in my pyjamas)

i got to talk about CanLit with a great panel of people--Jocelyne Allen, Steven Beattie, Cathy Marie Buchanan, Tish Cohen, Terry Fallis, Stacey May Fowles, Jessica Grant, Mark Anthony Jarman, Andy Maize Jacob McArthur Mooney,John Mutford, Neil Smith, Zoe Whittall, & Steve Zipp, moderated by Mark Medley & Brad Frenette for the Canada Also Reads contest at the National Post. Apparently some of it will reappear in the paper, at some point...but meanwhile, check it out online at the Afterword.


we talked writing, marketing, locations, language...and small verus big presses. i was defending Jocelyne Allen's book YOU AND THE PIRATES from the excellent small press The Workhorsery. there's still time to vote for the book (go to the Afterword.)

read the Afterword's chat here

the Owl & the Sparrow

had a great time in Montreal the other weekend...my olde home town & all, even rolled out a Nuit Blanche, February edition, so i could celebrate being in Montreal by going to galleries all night long. okay, some people like dancing in nightclubs, and i like watching conceptual art videos at 2 in the morning. followed by hotdogs with coleslaw at the Montreal Pool Room. i only wish i'd had time to go out to the biosphere, to watch the night birds...including, i suppose, this preternaturally-glowing blue owl...

i got to do two very different readings while in Montreal--a Friday lunchtime reading at the venerable Atwater Library, accompanied by the very fun & cool sax player Dave Turner, and the second at the Pilot Reading Series, which takes place every month or so at the Sparrow, a bar which is now on my all-time favourite top ten bar list for the planet earth. this, based on three essential facts: it has excellent Quebec beer; it has a beautiful staircase that goes nowhere; and it is conveniently close to an all-night bagel bakery. it also has some of the most beautiful wallpaper i have ever seen, in a bar or elsewhere.

a big giddy bisou to all who made the readings happen...

Pteros Tactics

Pteros Tactics is opening at Harbourfront, just in time to help us recover from Valentine's Day. the unusually-named work is a newly-created dance piece from the marvellous Toronto Dance Theatre choreographer Christopher House. it's inspired by an essay by Anne Carson (one of my favourite poets).

A few lines from her essay leap out to me, looking at them now: "mere space has power," Carson writes in Eros the Bittersweet. "The separating power of space can be marked with various activities; by racing through it, for example..." The lines seem purposely written for dance. "Eros... exists because certain boundaries do."

i had a lovely conversation with House about inspiration and the rehearsal process last week. and the resulting article is now up at Toronto's cultural site, Live With Culture, here.

writerly vengeance

after a week of fidgeting with computer stuff, i find this voice mail recording especially satisfying: Hunter S. Thompson is, ahem, unimpressed with some new technology.

hang in through his routine curses to the last 30 seconds...ahhhh, much dreamed-of writer revenge! (note--it looks like a video but it's simply an answering machine recording)



(thanks to Bookninja for a perfect way to start my Saturday)

Canada Also Reads

The National Post's literary blog THE AFTERWORD just announced its 'Canada Also Reads' discussion/competition/kinda-bookclub, and i'm thrilled to be in the ring, representing Jocelyne Allen's You and the Pirates. stand by...we start talking March 1st...

Building Storeys 2010

at the Gladstone tonight for the opening of the photo exhibit Building Storeys--fantastic shots of interiors of the R.C. Harris water filtration plant, the John Street Roundhouse, the R.L.Hearn Generating Station (some of my faves in the show)...and other industrial buildings we don't admire enough as aesthetic contributors to our cityscape. since most of the chosen sites are public buildings, Mayor Miller turned up to talk about his belief in public buildings' greatness, and his hope that future Toronto construction can be as memorable as the Art Deco suavity of the R.C.Harris water filtration plant.

and why shouldn't our public buildings be grand, impressive, mysterious, beautiful... like these photos, taken by members of the Shadow Collective & D.K. Photo Group, supported by Heritage Toronto. photographers Olena Sullivan has a great description of the project, over here.

the show is up for the rest of the month, noon to 5pm daily on the 3rd & 4th floors of the Gladstone Hotel. with photos from 
Robert Dyke, Sean Galbraith, Rick Harris, Mathew Merrett, Timothy Neesam, Olena Sullivan & Toni Wallachy