----------Create a band worthy of NOW-----------

Make-a-Band! Mix 'n' Match your sound, style, and character!

It’s no secret in the music community that it takes a hell of a lot more than superior musicianship, creativity, and business acumen to get your work profiled in NOW.

No, Toronto’s foremost weekly entertainment magazine usually requires something a little more special, a little more novel. Untrained musicians butchering Klezmer tunes in powder blue suits worked well in the past, as did trained musicians beating on dollar store tambourines. Crowd-pleasing finishers, like humping a chair, will also at least garner you a one-liner.

“I was in a band, and we worked our asses off, and the only time we got a mention was the show where we dressed up like idiots in stupid hats and long coats,” said one Toronto musician friend, who prefers to remain nameless on this blog.

Thus, I have created a fool-proof method for nabbing a profile in the illustrious rag. Simply choose one item from each of the columns above to create your act’s parameters, and put together a website and press kit to suit.

For example, by choosing metrosexuals, kazoos, and African batik, you create a kazoo choir of well groomed men in African batik dresses. Presto change-o, you’re now NOW material!

Go on, it’s fun!

Chicks dig scars

I was going to post about Scarface B.'s patriotic and Canuckian injury, but he won't let me.

In other news: Hot boyfriend is a fellow grad this week.

Glad to be a grad

I am officially a j-school grad, as confirmed this morning by the program coordinator of Humber College's journalism program. I will add this diploma to my other two, in hopes that three is indeed the charm and that this will mark the end of my serial student days.

I have spent a total of 50 months in various Canadian colleges, and can now perform the following skills:

• Record sound
  
• Sing jazz
• Write news stories

Some other 50-month facts:

• Credit lines: 1
• Student loans: 2
• Phone companies: 3
• Boyfriends: 4
  
• Apartments: 5
• Restaurant jobs: 6
• Roommates: 7

The college girl blues

I have always had a serious inferiority complex about my status as a college girl. Diplomas just don't seem to carry as much weight as degrees, no matter how many you have.

On the upside, they are shorter, cheaper, and usually enable you to carry a full-time job to pay the rent. So, despite having spent an inordinate amount of time in St. F.X.'s pub, library, theatre, and tunnels (underground ones, with utility pipes, secret rooms, and flashlights), I've passed almost my entire post-secondary career in community colleges.

In Humber College's music program, I suffocated in tiny rooms with electric keyboards, and learned music business from the lead singer of Triumph. Back in my hometown, I used to sneak into the music department at St. F.X. to play the upright pianos and pretend I was a real music student, fluent in austere languages and exciting academic electives.

In 2003, I participated in an international Marxist conference in London, England. Many of the seminars I attended took place on a university campus. I spent more time daydreaming about the hallowed halls of learning than I did caring about whether the empire was invincible or whether I should boycott beer.

Later still, while limping unenthusiastically through Humber's post grad journalism program, I envied my fellow students with fat lofty B.A.'s attached to their CVs, even if I kicked butt in news reporting and already had a job in the industry.

But frankly, sitting here in Kingston, a trespasser soaking up the wireless signal at Queen's University, I'm not so sure I'm that lesser of a person for my shop-boy math and lack of a degree.

These students are wearing flip flops, a statement I will continue to rail against all my life. Flip flops are ghetto jogging pants for your feet, and should not be displayed outside of the gym shower or the beach.

I'm pretty sure I learned that in college.

--------------Joel's new gig--------------

Miss Nova drives!

I arrived at the Etobicoke examiner's at the crack of dawn. Four other student vehicles circled the lot nervously, and we all parked poorly and without finesse. I felt competitive. Ronald told me to stand down.

The examiner let me listen to salsa, but didn't laugh when I joked about drag racing against the other students. I was nervous, and called him 'dude.' He told me I was allowed to talk if it made me less nervous, so I didn't stop talking once for the entire test. Not. Even. Once. I told him about my driving schools and about Iqaluit and about the accident I had with Matt's truck.

I completed the test with no major incident. We pulled into the parking lot. I parked poorly again, and hung my head for the executioner.

I passed.

At this point, everything became a blur. I jumped up and down, and advertised my success to instructors who weren't Ronald. I told the guy at the road test desk and the woman at the information desk. I yelled it in the general direction of the lineup.

When we got out to the parking lot, Ronald told me the other students all failed.

"My driving instructor is the best!" I yelled to the ash-grey sky. "I win!"

Kate Nova's high on life (and pills)

Saturday night's date with the hot boyfriend got shafted by an eight-hour trip to Mount Sinai's emergency unit, and while there's nothing more romantic than breathing tubes and a heart monitor (especially as accessories to a faded blue hospital gown), I'm a little perturbed by the universe today.

Yesterday I wasn't perturbed at all, mostly because I was still floating in a Percocet haze. I cancelled my driver's lesson because the pill bottle said something about avoiding heavy machinery, and watched five episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4, instead.

The pharmacist gave me a vial of 30 highly-addictive generic Percs, of which I'll probably use 10. Those little white pills, while providing me with much needed pain relief, have destroyed my short term memory and concentration.

Now I'm going to edit a newspaper.

Driving Miss Nova (poorly)

Today's driving lesson was notable for several reasons:

1) Ronald suggested I rebook my driver's test on a later date after I hit the curb so hard I messed up the car's alignment.

2) I learned how to pump gas.

3) I flipped another driver the bird for the first time when they beeped at me for being cautious.

4) We listened to salsa music really loud.

Angry poetry

So what? I'm allowed. All are permitted to lead with a quote once in their journalistic career, and publish a bad piece of poetry on their blog once in their lifetime. Now I've done both.

See Cleaning House, 'cause that's when I found this snippet:

2 tiny metal sticks
their neat pile
in the morning
pricks
me up
I shower, leave my hair down,
as you like.

Or, as she likes,
who left her hairclips
here
so carelessly.

Cleaning house

This week I tore apart 22 notebooks, representing several years of interviews, research, and notes for community news stories in Toronto. After a few years most of my chicken scratches were degraded beyond legibility, and without context the notebooks were for the most part useless.

Since 2002 I have met with and interviewed speakers of dozens of languages and refugees from three continents, along with politicians, artists, and students. I discovered that Toronto is a collection of villages, the concept of NIMBYism, and the fact that only a handful of the people I know were born here.

While flipping through my old notes I remembered a conversation I had had with a student from the Congo, who had been exiled from his country under threat of death for attending a rally for peace. His biggest crime was having dinner at a professor's house who was suspected of treason for his respective "work for peace." He said the biggest adjustment for him in Toronto was "not hearing gunshots anymore."

I remembered a conversation I had with a 90-year-old Lithuanian woman in the west end. She had recounted how, upon moving to Toronto, she could not find a landlord who would rent to her, a "DP." For months she and her half dozen children slept crowded in a room with a handful of other families from Eastern Europe, outcast from the Canadian neighbourhood that refused to take them in.

I remembered a conversation I had with a Hungarian-born firefighter who sat in my living room to teach me about the Hungarian revolution, and why there were so many schnitzel shops in the Annex.

Scribbled in the margins I also found recipes, shopping lists, and angry poetry, and sketches of airports, potted plants, and jazz musicians. I found letters I never sent to someone, and nasty little notes scribbled to me from another.

Now, all that remains of much of it are the fragments which went to print, and the few anecdotes I retained as fodder for conversation and imagination.

An ookpik fable

They conquered the Giant Ookpik with their cunning and kindness.

Sad cowboys

The Nova Scotia government has launched a new campaign to combat population attrition.

Check out calgaria.ca, a tax dollar-sponsored site outlining symptoms and treatments for a fictitious ailment it claims affects "4 out of 5 Nova Scotians living away from home in Calgary."

The site includes testimonials from unhappy emigrants, and links to Nova Scotia job sites.

Its original handle, "Delusional Calgaria," was shortened after a number of mental health advocacy groups cried foul.

But what about the daughters-gone-to-Toronto? Has it written us off?

Humph. I'm going to Iqaluit then.

Whole new level of geek

I almost forgot to blog about this very important thing. I played a video game on Friday.

On the weekend Sebastien and I had a really hoser night of bad movie/beer/pizza. He also introduced me to Age of Empires, this wicked civilization-building game.

There was a bit of friction, because I didn't want to introduce war, church, or capitalism into my world, but was forcefully encouraged to.

In the end my peeps, the French, destroyed the world across the river with a monster truck.

Seb sent me this screenshot the next day, which depicts a dog, a panther, and a coyote picking off the survivors of another world.

I never want to run into Seb in real-life combat. His tactics scare me.

Eco-Palms

The imposing Catholic church in my neighbourhood offers services in six different languages. I have never attended, nor do I ever intend to anywhere again, despite having jumped through the full slate of god-hoops as a child.

This morning was Palm Sunday, as evidenced by the parade of pink-cheeked cherubs in Easter shoes with fists full of palm fronds.

When I was little, the parishioners in my community would twist the palms into little crosses and wedge them above their doorframes. I always wondered where the palm trees came from. When I was about five I decided Jesus flew them in on a sleigh like Santa's.

So, I googled it today. I discovered there's a brand new industry of fair-trade palms. Initiatives like Eco-Palms provide fronds bought for decent wages and from sustainable palm forests.

Who knew? And what were they doing for the gazillion years previous?

East of the Don

Rarely in my Toronto times do I travel east of the Don River.

Having lived and worked exclusively in the mid to west end for six years, my wanderings are generally restricted to an embarassingly narrow strata of the city. On Saturday Caleb sought to partially rectify my geographic deficiency with a jaunt east to visit his sister.

We took the scenic route on the Queen streetcar, observing the dip and bob of wealth from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, and were briefly detained by a Chinese parade on Spadina Avenue. I can't figure out what the parade was for.

We found Caleb's sister at Zane, the patisserie where she works. It's located near the former site of the Woodbine racetrack (now cookie-cutter residences as far as the eye can see).

After our fourth cup of coffee, we headed south to the water's edge. We passed signs advertising $1.2-million homes that were plastered over with banners trumpeting "Sold."

The sand warmed the soles of my shoes.

The east end got the full brunt of Ondaajte's attention in In the Skin of a Lion. It was the first book I read when I moved to the city, recommended by a kind bookseller to a very lonely Nova Scotian in the Junction.

A couple weeks ago I was delivering flyers in that area, and Neiland pointed out a number of scenes from the book, including the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant, and the point of the bridge where Carravagio rescued the nun.