Letters to the Editor
It sure is a busy time of year, what wth christmas/holiday shopping and all, but that doesnt excuse rude and abusive behavior towards mall, department store or supermarket staff. I work cart return at a supermarket ( i wont say which one) and i have to say the staff is great, managment is great, and…
Love the way we bitch
This week’s bitch: Not so hot
LETTERHEAD
Comments on all aspects of the paper’s performance and city life.
Hung up (on hate)
We love Madonna. Unabashedly. Her tenacity and ability to reinvent and reposition herself for as long as we’ve been alive is mind-boggling. And though the music peaked with Ray of Light, we admire her untouched status as a modern pop icon. So we were stoked when our Rolling Stone showed up this week, with an…
Conjunction Junction
The reputation of the band set to open for Bedouin Soundclash this Friday is somewhat ambiguous at the moment, but that won’t last for long. Brampton’s The Junction signed with Universal this summer and will soon return home to finish work on their debut full-length. Bassist Matthew Jameson says the deal came about slowly. “It…
Pampered pets
Glamour Puss & The Naughty Dog pet boutique is set to open later this month in the Paramount, next to Soda Pop Curtis. Owners Candice Blaney and Derek Gallant were hoping to open December 1, but construction has been delayed. The new pet shop will deal exclusively in high-end, “fun and funky” merchandise for cats…
Gas track
Back in 1997, seven years after the Kyoto Accord was born, HRM joined the 20 percent club. We committed to reducing our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20 percent by the year 2012. Instead, our emissions increased. By 2002, SuperCitizens were producing 28 percent more GHGs than in 1997. One reason is simply there were…
Volunteers make it work
To the editor, If you read some of the recent press coverage about CKDU-FM’s recent funding drive it would be easy to get think the station is made up of the paid staff and a bunch of volunteers. It would seem the volunteers do programs and the staff make decisions and are responsible for everything,…
Where’s the love?
To the editor, Why, Fred, why? What’s with taking pot shots at another shopping district and commission as you set out to establish one for Agricola? (See Erin O’Halloran’s “Street smarts” article from last week’s issue.) What all districts and their mouthpiece commissions have in common is revitalizing, maintaining and growing in the face of…
No offense intended
To the editor, I’ve just read last week’s letters. Ms. Davis took offense in “No good, Gus” because she thought the ad wasn’t funny, especially since it personally affected her. As someone who watched his vibrant grandmother die from Alzheimer’s, I’m familiar with what she’s gone through. I also see the early signs of it…
No offense intended
We’d like to apologize to Ms. Stephanie Davis and anyone else who was offended by last week’s Gus’ Pub ad that depicted Alzheimer’s in a humorous way. It was insensitive of us to associate this disease with humour in any form. At Gus’ Pub we strive to provide a fun and entertaining atmosphere so people…
Slean times
Sarah Slean is shedding skins, leaving pockets of herself all across the country before she flees to France. She stops in at Ginger’s Tavern on December 7 and 8 to peel off a few more layers. “It is true,” says Slean, with a hint of a French accent, on an early-morning conversation from Edmonton. “I…
Lend us your ears
Tori Amos The Beekeeper (Epic)Amos’s first album of original material since 2002’s epic Scarlet’s Walk is a return to the ballad-based times of Under the Pink, with a gospel choir and Damien Rice thrown in for new colour. A political bent pokes its way through the (overlong) narrative, most bizarrely and beautifully in the Rice…
Field study
A radio cooking show host. A multimedia auteur. A Rickenbacker-wielding session musician. A video artist. A Super Friend and movie star. These are the personalities that make up City Field, one of the most original bands to come out of the Halifax scene in some time. Although the project appears occasionally as a part-time venture,…
Soundclash of music
Two thousand five has been a year to remember for Kingston three-piece Bedouin Soundclash. Since the spring, their hit single “When the Night Feels My Song” has gone from nonexistent to number one on Toronto’s influential radio station The Edge, number three on this week’s National Playlist on CBC and number three on the MuchMusic…
Bee’s in her bonnet
“Eatin’ good in the Neighbourhood” goes the Applebee’s slogan, and despite the grammatical awkwardness, it’s a catchy phrase. The latest chain to hit Metro, its shtick is that it celebrates neighbourhoods—each outlet is decorated with pics and memorabilia reflecting the ’hood in which it sits. I’m always up for “eatin’ good” and I’m “in the…
Log rolling
The bûche de noël, or Yule log, is a show-stopping Christmas dinner finale especially popular with people who aren’t crazy about the traditional Christmas dried-fruit-and-booze-laden cakes and puddings. Made of cream-filled sponge cake, covered with chocolate icing and fancifully decorated, it’s sure to impress—and to taste much better than the original wooden version. Historically a…
History repeating
Tonight New Yorker and ex-pat Dartmouthian Laura MacDonald will be on the Boston Common, a special invited guest to the lighting of the now controversial Boston Holiday/Christmas tree. This year’s tree is a 14-metre white spruce from Chester Basin. “No one I ask in Boston ever has any idea why the tree is from Nova…
Merry mixes
Fun MixMarnie MacLennan1. “One Great City (I hate Winnipeg)” – The Weakerthans 2. “Ageless beauty” – Stars3. “Like Eating Glass” – Bloc Party4. “deceptacon” – Le Tigre5. “Not over you yet” – Kevin Devine6. “Gay Bar” – Peaches7. “Gold Digger” – Kanye West 8. “The way we get by” – Spoon 9. “This Boy is…
Nightfall
AT 6:00 P.M. , Harvey Jones, the editor of the Daily Echo, stood in the shadow of a row of stone buildings at the end of the Pickford & Black Wharf. He was waiting for the same tug that had dropped Hayes off at the Imo earlier that morning. Pickford & Black were the agents…
Nightfall
AT 9:00 P.M. , LIEUTENANT Colonel Frederick McKelvey Bell, assistant director of medical services (ADMS) for the Canadian military, dictated a confident telegram to St. John telling them that he would not need any more doctors. As the ADMS, the military hospitals—Camp Hill, Cogswell, and the destroyed Pier 2—were his priority, but they were filled…
The eyes have it
2046 (sony)Wong Kar Wai’s long-awaited follow-up to In the Mood For Love finally arrives on DVD in December. Partly a sequel to the doomed love affair of the earlier film, and partly a science-fiction mood piece, Kar Wai makes images as important as narrative. CK Angel: Season 5 (fox)Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s shadow haunted this…
Best of Music readers’ poll
Vote or die
Holiday! Celebrate!
This is traditionally the time when, slavering over the prestige and box office returns that the Academy Awards season anoints upon its chosen, Hollywood studios drop the biggest and best of the year’s movies. Odds are, if there’s going to be a challenging mainstream film that will attract both the attention of the critics and…
SAVAGE LOVE
Dan Savage advises young and old to stop playing games.
Reviews
The Ice Harvest The combined talent of director Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) and performers John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton is a lot to recommend and it got this sour pill made. Firmly ensconced in the Coen brothers’ world of Midwestern noir, sans the quirky characters, The Ice Harvest takes place on Christmas Eve in…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Be hungry for raw truth, Saggitarius, says Rob Brezsney.
National lampoon
Now that we’re into a federal election campaign, everything is looking political—even the death and funeral last week of Charlie Keating, the one-time cable TV czar. In my former life as a CBC hack, I vividly remember clomping door-to-door with Charlie in his futile 1988 campaign to eject John Savage from the mayor’s chair in…
Fuelling around
“People need to see it to believe it,” says Myriam Hammami. With her new veggie-fuelled car, Hammami will stoke the flames of belief wherever she goes. Hammami is the education coordinator for the Atlantic Canada chapter of the Sierra Club, and her job takes her to schools all over the Maritimes. Hammami drives an average…
Art of the matter
A quick tour around the HRM Cultural Advisory Committee’s open house on November 28 paints a grim picture for the city’s proposed cultural plan. While councillor Sue Uteck and a group of city staffers listen to citizens’ concerns, the other 10 members of the committee, comprised of citizen volunteers and other city representatives, are not…
Who’s your daddy?
I am the only person to have ever complained in public about Christmas Daddies. Christmas Daddies is the seasonal telethon, broadcast by CTV across the Maritimes. This year it’s on Saturday, December 3, from 11am to 6pm. It raises money for underprivileged children. The story of the beginning of Christmas Daddies, recounted at christmasdaddies.org, is…
