I can never seem to get it together enough (<--life summed up) to actually put together an entry for this blog and I end up with a disjointed list of stuff.  This entry will continue in that not-so-fine tradition.  

• I recently found these two identical* postcards from Carcross at a rummage sale, and I was actually in Carcross last summer for a couple of hours while waiting to hop a bus to Whitehorse.  I don't know exactly how old this photo is, but I would guess it's from some time in the early 1990s, as the back of the postcard mentions "the old stern-wheeler SS Tutshi" was "recently" destroyed by fire and a quick internet search reveals that the Tutshi burned in 1990.  Of course, for all I know they could still be selling this postcard somewhere in Carcross, though I don't remember seeing it.  But really, why would I?  It's not an especially great photo of the town (trust me, I've been there!), which makes it kinda funny as a postcard photo.  Although none of them would make good postcard photos, I would like to show you some of the photos I took:

On the sandy shore of Bennett Lake

The store across from the train station.  It's on the postcard!  Below is a closer view of the card (see the pink building?):

And see the Caribou Hotel here (the big blue building)?  Here it is today:

This is the side of it.  It is now closed.  Note the doors to nowhere and the boarded-up windows.

• Kinda sad.  But this will be a more upbeat bullet point!  Hi, there.  So, this is something I do often:  buy an album (or request it as a gift and actually receive it) then not listen to it for years.  Yes, I fully acknowledge that I am absolutely terrible.  I also do that with books, but that's a bit of a different situation in which the library plays a major role (ably backed up by two strong supporting players, laziness and the always surprisingly small number of hours in a day).  I KNOW.  Remember my last entry, in which I confessed my Can-illiteracy?  Anyway, all this is a prelude to my making this woefully late proclamation:  Jason Collett's 2005 album Idols of Exile is great.  I just discovered this now, in 2011 (jeez-uz, is it really 2011 already?).  I think I got the album for Xmas the year I saw the film Everything's Gone Green because the song "Hangover Days" was used in it and it really caught my ear so I went home and looked it up and then listened to it a bunch of times on MySpace (remember that shit?).  So that was probably 2006 or 2007.  And I'm sure (because it's kinda my M.O.) that I probably listened to the album once or twice after I got it and was like, "Eh, whatever," then tossed it on the pile of Albums I'll Listen to Later and Will Probably End Up Loving.  And sure enough...  I looked on YouTube for a couple of the songs I really love but didn't get results.  The pickings are kind of slim for anything from this album, actually.  In fact, the official video for the album's first track that is posted on the official Arts & Crafts channel is messed up--the video is really pixelated and the music track skips!  However, I did find this which I don't want to embed but I will tell you that it is stills from the comically awful TV show One Tree Hill.  Weird.  Anyhow, I did find this video for "I'll Bring the Sun," which is pretty cute: 

• And so, listening to Idols of Exile got me thinking about Everything's Gone Green (though perhaps now I will associate it with One Tree Hill?  Oh, that would be sad), which I enjoyed when I saw it lo those many years ago (yeah, it actually played here for a week or so!).  The screenplay was written by Douglas Coupland and it's chock full of Coupland-y themes, and it's also really Vancouver-y.  It's fun to see a movie that's actually set in Vancouver, i.e. the city that has become American City Stand-in on several TV dramas and movies.  I found this scene from the movie on YouTube that was filmed (or, mostly filmed?) in a spot I know well.

Looking toward Sunset Beach (that flag across the inlet is visible in the clip).

Sunset Beach.  When I saw that sculpture, it made me think of this movie and the whale and that the sculpture looks like whale ribs.  The sculpture was installed in this spot a couple of years ago I think--before the movie, and of course there is no correlation except in my mind.

• And speaking of Douglas Coupland, I downloaded the first four of his Massey Lectures before a trip to Vancouver and listened to them on the train there and back.  When I came back home to my computer, I went to retrieve the fifth and final lecture but it never showed up in my iTunes (I subscribed to the series, and the fifth lecture hadn't become available before I left).  But apparently the CBC was being whack about it and possibly never made the fifth one available because there were lots of pissed off comments hinting at this on the IDEAS homepage.  Whatever.  So now I heard 4/5 of a novel being read to me and I am balking at both the idea of paying for a set of podcasts that I already have 4/5 of and at the idea of buying the book because having it read to me by Douglas Coupland was actually way awesome and I want to hear the rest of the book in his voice.  Which...is kind of sexy?  Can I say that??  No, I probably shouldn't.

• I would like to talk a little more about Douglas Coupland in this space in the future.  I am announcing my intentions to do this now because I am hoping that doing so will make me actually do it because I won't want to make a liar out of myself.  I am trying to, you know, actually get stuff done.  And I am also going to add that I will very soon be devoting an entire blog post to Dan Mangan.  You can take that one to the bank.

*Yeah, they're identical.  My scanner is a new addition to my household and we're still trying to work some things out, so it ended up cutting off some of what I was trying to scan.  Whatever, scanner!

BARNEY.

So.  I'd heard that a movie was made of Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler and I thought, damn, I should read more CanLit.  My record in this regard is embarrassingly poor.  I don't even want to admit to how little of Canada's (uh...purportedly...!!) fine literature I've read.  I'm sorry.  Anyway, I decided to begin atoning for my behavior by getting Barney's Version from the library, but when it arrived for me at my local branch, it was nestled on the holds shelf alongside five other books (I both love and hate when this happens).  I started in on it but quickly realized that it seemed fairly awesome, and therefore purchasing it would be a safe bet.  But, being perennially broke and having five other books to read in the meantime, I waited and asked for it for Xmas.  In the interim, I heard an interview with the movie's screenwriter on Q.  He came off as a bit of a cocky twerp, but I guess I was in a charitable mood at the time and though, "Eh, the kid's just got moxie, that's all."  He talked confidently about how he reworked a lot of the narrative to have it make sense as a movie and tweaked certain aspects (such as settings) to make it more commercially appealing in international markets.  I thought, "Hey, this is interesting.  We're learning a bit about the realities of movie-making.  This guy's being quite straightforward, and he's kind of right--a movie with a lot of voiceover explaining everything is pretty universally lame."  Then, I read the book.

I cried throughout the whole last chapter (or the "Afterword"*) and clutched the book to my chest for a good five minutes or so after closing it for the last time.  I love this motherfucking book so much.  I had no idea I would love it this much.  How dare they touch a proverbial hair on this book's proverbial head?  BASTARDS.  Of course, honestly...I might have actually enjoyed the movie if I hadn't read the book.  But...no.  I'm really glad I read the book because I absolutely love it and now it's all up in my brainpan.  And to be perfectly honest here, I am not a "movie person."  I am much, much more of a book person (also, a big-time TV person, and a music person).  I barely like any movies.  I barely see any movies.  I don't actually have the option to see this anyway (well, before it's released on DVD)--it hasn't been released in my town (which is a pretty big, pretty movie-loving market), and since we're already post-Academy Awards announcements and the movie isn't up for anything big, I don't anticipate it being released here.  So, I headed for my computer to see what I was missing.

I felt a bit ill watching the trailer.  The whole thing was like, "What?!?  NO."  Now it's a buddy picture for Barney and his dad?  1950s Paris is now (by the looks of it) 1970s Rome?  Clara is a pretty blonde?  Fucking "Bang A Gong"?  Well, okay, that last one is more of a beef with the trailer itself.  Also, Paul Giamatti is just...no.  I don't like him for this.  I don't want to sound harsh but the thought of looking at and listening to him for the length of an entire movie...bums me out.  I got tired of him just watching the trailer.  He's not Barney.  Barney has a wicked charm, despite his curmudgeonly (at best) and often downright dickish (at worst) ways.  Paul Giamatti is just a schlub, and appears to be once again playing to type.  But, I think I like Minnie Driver as the Second Mrs. Panofsky.  And Mark Addy as Seamus O'Hearne seems like pretty good casting though, weirdly, he doesn't appear in what is billed as the "official" trailer, yet he's all over what's called the "US trailer".  I really don't know about Scott Speedman as Boogie, though having said that I want to like him because, weirdly, just seeing him in the trailer made me weak-kneed.  I know he's been in other stuff--which I haven't seen (not a movie person...)--but he really just makes me flash back to Felicity and even though I haven't seen that show in about a decade (gawd, I feel oooold), I was arguably just as into Ben as Felicity was (see?  total TV person).  Anyway.

Actually, now that I watched three different trailers for this movie four or five times each (and will now be humming "Bang A Gong" for the next three days), I kind of want to see the movie even though I am ideologically opposed to its very existence (oh yeah, I bring the drama).  I am soooo complicated.  If it does ever open here, I will buy an extra-large box of popcorn (or a "Monster Bucket" of popcorn, in the parlance of the movie theater I worked at for two weeks when I was 20) so I can throw handfuls at the screen while jeering and hissing.  God, I am practically live-blogging my change of heart re: this movie because after I typed that last sentence I watched Paul Giamatti's Golden Globe acceptance speech (best actor for his role in Barney's Version).  The man said, "I salute the great nation of Canada," while actually literally saluting.  Okay, Paul.  I like you.  And I like your glasses!  You seem nice.  But...I'm still not sure about you in this movie, and I'm less sure of the movie itself.  Bottom line, the book is just too, too amazing and to mess with it in any way seems hideous and hateful (DRAMZ).  IMO, Richler should have gone full Salinger on this one and made sure no one made it into a movie.


*Read the book to find out why this is in quotes.  Oh, please read it!

Okay, so...I wrote this big long thing* about how I read a few articles about music at the end of 2010 that were just supercritical downers that ended up totally depressing me.  But that was boring.  So instead, I think I will just say that I read some dumb shit by music critics that I regretted reading because, even though anyone who knows me would verify that I am quite critical and bitchy, it seemed too mean to me.  And I should add that it was all about artists and songs I didn't like in the first place, but I ended up almost wanting to defend them against super-pissy and overly hyperbolic criticism.  So I thought it might cheer me up to think of some Canada-y, music-y stuff from the last year that I like and then share it with the zero readers of my blog.  To wit:

-I am so the last person you would expect to hear saying, "I like this remix."  And yet, here we are.  This remix is great, and the video is endearingly awesome.  I really dig that it has a slightly similar feel to the Duck Sauce video--studio, party, friends, dancing, cameos--but it has a big, wonderful la jeunesse de Montreal vibe to it that makes it actually look like more fun to me than the original.  Which looks like fun too (my favorite part is where they are drinking milkshakes (?) with their arms entwined), but mostly the kind of fun that cool people have in a music video, whereas in this video practically everyone seems cool too but also has a broad, genuine grin on their face and it's all tee-shirt making and shots of the city and Lauren Collins (!) and cute guys in cute glasses (for more of that, see below) and reppin' the 514 and the kind of bright light that makes everything look fun and cheery, and there's a free download of the song on this video's YouTube page along with a list of the people who appear in the video, both of which are very much appreciated by me.

-These glasses on this face.  Fucking MADE FOR EACH OTHER.  Why do cool people always have the coolest, most perfect accessories?  Not being anything close to cool, I have always wondered about this.  Like, this shit is so cool I know he was one of those dudes in school who always wanted to borrow a pencil and a piece of paper from an uncool person like me who schlepped a huge binder and all my books and different-colored pens for every subject plus shit like a hole-punch (just in case!) around in a huge backpack.  And it was always a mystery what these cool guys did with the pencil they were "loaned" because they would never give it back but they would always need one the next day too (hmm, well...pencil-fighting** was a scourge in some schools).  (And, in case you were wondering, this is music-related because it's Dave1 from Chromeo and it's Canada-related because he's from Montreal though it's never totally clear to me whether the band is NY or Montreal-based, or...both?  And this photo is a screencap from a video that I hope to talk about here in the future--I seriously want to discuss Chromeo and Business Casual in more detail.  Hold me to this.  Anyway, I take way too much delight in screencapping everything lately.  So, to be clear, not my photo (they don't let me get this near cool people***, haha) but I did screencap it myself).

-Radio Radio is the friggin' awesomest, most totally-out-of-left-field goofy Acadian rap group EVER.  And I think probably the coolest thing about them is that if you look up "Chiac" on Wikipedia, there is actually a link to the above video (avec les paroles).  I would say that Radio Radio is one of those love them or hate them groups--jokey hipster Beastie Boys-esque French rapping is not for everyone--but I would say I'm firmly in the "love them" camp.  The Acadian-French-mixed-with-English (Chiac, check the Wikipedia link!) gives the impression of a dizzying, dazzling grip on the two languages, with the nervy swagger to fluidly mix the two in a way that seems to frustrate both francophones (words unfamiliar to even the quebecois and perhaps too much English intruding on the French) and anglophones (waaaay too much French for people who don't know it).  Anyway, their latest album, Belmundo Regal, is a bit more slick and musical than the album "Jacuzzi" came from (Cliche Hot), and it was shortlisted for the 2010 Polaris Prize (props, guys).  It is just the sort of fun and funny gem that I bust out when I need cheering up.  Yay for this.

-Shad's latest album, TSOL, is great.  That is all.  No, wait, that is not all.  This video is fab, and not just because in it Shad is not only cute but also wearing the dopest sneakers ever.  I love the end, where he slyly gives credit where credit is due.  And I shall now relate to you my ten favorite lyrics (they vary in length though, so...lines? verses? passages? whatever, you get it, right?) on TSOL (accuracy ensured by the lyric sheet in the album sleeve), in no particular order:

1. The cat's out the bag the new Shad's out/Now they spell it S.H.-A.D.D. the way I spazz out/I don't badmouth but I quickly put down a cat if he bit me/Like Roy's boy Sigfried. -"Yaa I Get It"
2. I ain't gotta say real talk 'cause all my talk is. -"Lucky 1's"
3. It's the Mister North of the 49th/Spitter of the sort of rhymes/you can borderline picture/Story-time Slick Rick meets Mordecai Richler. -"We Are the Ones (Reservoir Poetry)"
4. Chilled, said I don't wanna link give me my space/Like Tom, now I'm tryin' to add a friend/if she on the same page like my comments and Top 8. -"Call Waiting"
5. Well my name ain't Lil Wayne Gretzky/but y'all know better than to check me/in the game I hold records like a Technics/Telling referees 'peek at the press seats for a sec please...'/Drop ya gloves OJ--I'll knock you into next week/make ya get teeth replaced. -"Yaa I Get It"
6. The world turns and there's clouds sometimes/but there's no such thing as a setting sun/it always keeps shining... -"Keep Shining"
7. She's the only girl like Snow White or Smurfette. -"Telephone"
8. The Mississauga continues--Brampton/where my DJ's lampin' like Green Lantern--Sampling. -"Rose Garden"
9. Life's no grand prix/no race, no pace car, and there's no shortcuts/and no one's that special--there ain't no short bus. -"Lucky 1's"
10. I weigh two bucks, and if I had two slugs to spray like rah rah/Glenn Beck better duck like foie gras/Make shots poke his face like Gaga but Mama says forgive/so I'll give him that bar like a Mars and let him live. -"Rose Garden"

But now having done that, I'm like, "But what about 'A Good Name'?  And 'Listen'?  And 'Telephone' is nothing but awesome lyrics!  And what about that part in 'Keep Shining' about how we need more female rappers?  And 'We, Myself, and I' and 'At the Same Time'..."  Yeah, this album is awesome and it is totally readily available in the US--I bought it at my local neighborhood record store, so no excuses.

-I bought a new iPod recently (the old one was a hand-me-down and it was really scratched up and beaten to hell by the time I got it, but I used it for two years until the headphone jack completely died and the battery would only hold about two hours worth of juice per charge), and of the 25 most-played songs so far, eight are from Dan Mangan's album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice.  I think that's all I'll say for now, because Dan Mangan is another person I really want to talk about more in-depth here in the future...

-Why no ladies?  I am usually all about the ladies, but my Canadian lady holy trinity of Emily Haines, Feist, and Amy Millan didn't put out anything (or anything that I was wild about, or maybe anything I would be wild about but was too lazy/poor/out of it**** to have heard) in 2010.  But, oh, there is Coeur de Pirate, who I have gotten hip to lately.  I think this is my favorite song of hers.

-Et voila.

*Sophisticated word choice FTW.
**Is pencil-fighting still a thing?  Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
***I have such a thing* (see above) about cool people, can you tell?  I am so uncool it hurts.  But don't worry, it doesn't hurt that badly.
****And if there are three words I would use to describe myself, they would most definitely be lazy, poor, and out of it (I know "out of it" is three words all by itself, but you know what I mean).

Entry in which I try and fail to impress the reader

I acknowledge that I have a pathological love of the underdog.  I have a soft spot for the neglected, overlooked, and the unloved.  "I HEART NY"?  Everyone hearts NY.  Of course they do.  That's boring.  I HEART WINNIPEG.  It could be argued (and am I arguing it?  Uh...naw, I don't really have the guts) that hearting NY is for the unimaginative, the disloyal, the ungrateful.  I'm not trying to be contrary, honestly.  I can certainly see why someone would heart NY.  But it's a big and often wonderful world here in all the places that are not NY.

Louis Riel, Winnipeg 2005

Calypso Gardens, Winnipeg 2005

La Tour Eiffel, Winnipeg 2005

Assiniboine River, Winnipeg 2005

And here is where I admit I've only been to Winnipeg once (which is when I took these photos).  I've also only been to New York City once (well...twice on the same trip), so there's that.  I hope to travel more but money and time are the obstacles, natch.  But here are some interesting (IMO, of course) travel experiences I've had in Canada (hey, man, it's my Canada-themed blog and I can talk about whatever I want!  Freedom!*).  Bustin' out the bullet list (just trying out the Blogger tools here):

• I visited the world-famous (um...) Gopher Museum in Torrington, AB.
• I rode an overnight Greyhound bus from Edmonton to Saskatoon.  Worst night's sleep I ever had!
• I laid down in the middle of the MacKenzie Highway at the 60th parallel and watched the northern lights.
• I accidentally walked through a movie set in Montreal.
• I have been to Vancouver loads of times and I love it there but for some reason nothing impressive stands out...  The only thing that springs to mind is getting my hair sucked into the back end of my travel hairdryer and having to rip it out, thereby accidentally giving my hairdo** some, uh, extra layers.  But that is the opposite of impressive, so maybe I will end the list now before I think of more embarrassing stuff.  Stuff like getting completely blitzed on nectarine-flavo(u)red wine coolers in Edmonton at far too advanced an age to have any business going near nectarine-flavo(u)red wine coolers.  Yeah, stuff like that.  STOP IT.

I've been to six provinces and two territories, but I can name all of them and their capitals.  Even Canadians find this impressive (Rick Mercer's influence?), which is...kinda sad.  [Have I used the word "impressive" too much in this entry?  Please forgive; I'm new at this.]

*The freedom to bore people is a freedom nonetheless.  (Spoken like a true American??  Maybe?)
**"Hairdo."  Hahahaha.

You really got a hold on me.

I have a bachelor's degree in Canadian Studies.  People's reactions are fairly predictable when I reveal this.  Eyebrows typically pop up, rendering a look of either amusement or surprise.  A common follow-up to the question of what I majored in is, "What?"  After I repeat my answer I am very often asked, "Oh, are you Canadian?"  When I reply in the negative, they pretty much universally seem baffled or amused, or both.  Were we in a comic book, one of those puffy thought bubbles would appear over their head, containing the word "nutjob" (or possibly just a drawing of a peanut, or perhaps a nut threaded onto a bolt).*  Sometimes I get a diplomatic and conversation-ending, "Oh, that's interesting!  I majored in [something practical, or at least something that, if not terribly useful in the job market, is widely recognized as a subject worthy of academic interest]."  Then I can ask them about that.  Other times I am asked to explain myself.

What is it with me and Canada?  I don't know if I have a satisfying answer to that; just that I can't remember a time when Canada didn't interest me.  

My first trip there was with my Campfire** group when I was in 4th grade.  We took the Princess Marguerite ferry (no longer extant) for a day trip to Victoria (I have no earthly idea why), and my two main memories of this are (1) a lady barfing into a clear plastic bag as we docked in Victoria (yuck, who does that?  Find a bathroom [washroom]), and (2) one of the members of my group having a freakish, likely unbroken-to-this-day streak of luck on the claw machine onboard and winning crappy stuffed animal after crappy stuffed animal.  I don't remember much about Victoria itself, just that they had different and very cool-looking money, I bought some rad-ass stickers (hello, I was in 4th grade and stickers were of an extremely high degree of importance) and things were a bit British-y.  This is a feature of Victoria (if you are not familiar with the place and its rep)--it's known to be a darn sight more British-y than at least the rest of Western Canada, if admittedly self-consciously so.  But this first trip really put Canada on my radar.  A foreign country, right next door, which I never really thought about before,  that barely seems different from where I live at all.  

Of course, my understanding of Canada and my feelings about it have changed and deepened in the ensuing years.  In general, America seems to be of two minds about Canada.  Many people here think Canada is a joke, an also-ran country that is pretty much no different from the US except perhaps that it is lamer.  And they know next to nothing about it.  Others--particularly those who lean to the left politically--think Canada is cool, but also don't know much about it.  It is definitely seen by some as a sort of lefty utopia, and/or a cute and quirkily lovable little place.  These ideas of Canada definitely underestimate the country and its people, and are (in my opinion) off-base.

So, what do I think of Canada?  This is difficult for me to answer in a way that makes sense to me and anyone who asks me, but here is the extremely short and un-nuanced answer:  I like it (um, just in case you didn't pick up on this).  It sounds dorky, but I find Canada endlessly interesting (again, just in case you didn't pick up on this through the fact that I majored in the study of it in college).  The place has a mysterious sort of  hold on me, hence the title of my blog (and of this particular post).

And so, what am I going to do with this blog?  Well...my university didn't have the greatest Canadian Studies program (no offense to them; I get it, I guess), so I just chose mostly to explore and work with Canadian-related topics in a lot of classes that didn't necessarily focus on Canada specifically.  I imagine I'll end up doing something similar here: talking about the things that interest me, having to do either directly or indirectly with Canada.  And, let me just say up front, I won't promise to stay on-topic.  It's, ah, not exactly one of my strengths.  I go off on tangents a lot.  I am (as you can see) fond of using parentheses, semi-colons, hyphens, colons and ellipses, and I am a rather zealous user of commas though I am trying to cut down on using them so much (I only gave up the Oxford comma fairly recently and sometimes I ache for it...).  I am also a devoted list-maker.  Also...I acknowledge that my French is absolutely atrocious.  Per the requirements of my major, I have two years of college-level French under my proverbial belt, but I am in no way fluent or skilled in speaking French.  I do, however, kind of love speaking French in my own limited way so I'm sorry if my shoddy use of it offends.

And thus begins my blog.  Hello!

*If this comment does not make it obvious to you, perhaps I should explain at this point that I read a lot of Donald Duck and Archie comics in my formative years. 

**Campfire is, I suppose, comparable to Girl Scouts (Girl Guides, in Canada) but WAY BETTER, MAN.  Don't make me explain this.