Letters to the Editor
I call for Tara Thorne’s head…and job. Good Lord! I thought it was all a bad dream until I came to after her first pick (Alannis) and heard her second pick for “The National Playlist”…Kelly Clarkson! What’s wrong with you? Did you hit your head…did I? Hear this! Your Arts Editor has left a black…
Slice of life
Good morning Liz,Read your review on the “Pizza Girls” in last week’s Coast Magazine and decided to give it a try after reading that the pizza was the best thin crust pizza that you’ve tasted. Since I like thin crust pizza, I decided to try it. I must tell you that what I got was…
Love the way we bitch
This week’s bitches: Busy signals & Dog-owning animal.
Dishing
Just when you thought flying Air Canada couldn’t get any worse, the latest issue of enRoute twists the knife. The same month AC announces you have to pay for meals on all North American routes, the in-flight magazine comes out with its annual Food Issue. Nothing like making hungry travellers read mouth-watering descriptions of Canada’s…
Cuff stuff
Oshawa alt-country darlings Cuff the Duke’s lone Halifax show in August was so successful they will be doing double duty this time around. The pair of performances on November 18 and 19 at Stage Nine will also be purposefully dissimilar, which frontman Wayne Petti says will make it worth forking out the $15 to attend…
Hands-on therapy
Hydrostone Osteopathy opened two weeks ago at 5155 Young above Julien’s Bakery. The clinic is owned by Jennifer Moss and specializes in osteopathy and massage therapy. Moss, formerly of the Bedford Health Centre, is currently completing her fourth year of studies in osteopathy. Osteopathy is a form of manual therapy that takes into account your…
In a fix
Angela Weal has been trying for five months to get her front and back doors fixed. Despite repeated promises, her landlord simply wouldn’t do the repairs. So Weal went to the city and the province for help. After months of phone calls, a hearing, and three separate orders to repair (all of which expired, with…
Number crunching
To the editor, As one of the many post-secondary students living and loving in the HRM, it’s a bit of a kick in the pants to see Dalhousie take the top spot in university-related categories in the recent Best Of issue. As far as I can tell, 20-something university students are an important demographic of…
Best letter to the editor
To the editor, To be named in the “Coast Best” category is a thrill that lasts all year long. I truly feel honoured and deeply appreciate all the readers who wrote me in—that is certainly how I hope people would feel about my practice. As a treatment psychologist, my therapeutic tasks include getting clients to…
Don’t put away the poppy
Dear Kyle Shaw, I think the white poppy is a great idea. Promoting peace is important any time of year, but especially now. Yet I strongly dissagree with the statement that the red poppy “glorifies war.” The plea of veterans that their service not be in vain is because their actions did serve a valuable…
Fighting words
To the editor, “They did not die in vain implies the war had a valuable purpose.” Nice logic, Mr. Shaw. Are you saying that our soldiers did die in vain, or that World War II didn’t have a valuable purpose? It’s not exactly clear in your editorial (“Great white hope,” Nov 10). Perhaps you think…
She’s number one
To Lezlie Lowe, Kudos to you on your forthright treatment of the issue of the lack of public toilet facilities in the Halifax area (“Nowhere to go,” Nov 10). It is high time that this matter was given the serious attention it is due. No one wants to discuss this issue openly, but it is…
Smoke screen
To the editor, I would like to set the record straight concerning the Pizza Corner fire at the KOD on October 27, as mentioned last week in Shop Talk (“Where there’s smoke”). I live above the pizza shop along with three other people and we’re a little sick of everybody getting the story wrong. TC…
Slice of life
I live near my favourite pizza place in the world, home of the Best Donair Sub Ever, the kind of donair a girl could marry and live happily ever after with. It’s an independently owned joint, not part of a chain like the ones that fill your mailbox with flyers touting Family Specials. I’ve been…
Friends in knead
Bread is one of the mainstays of the culinary world. Whether you call it baguette, naan, pain, brot, focaccia or pita, it is found in almost every culture in the world. Unfortunately for North Americans, bread is often an unnaturally soft leavened mass and not the chewy, golden domes and loaves of Europe. Last year,…
Body break
Marie Chouinard doesn’t read her own press. She’s surprised to hear about a feature interview penned by celebrity interrogator Sarah Hampson in last Saturday’s The Globe and Mail. If Chouinard did peruse her own publicity, she would learn that she’s considered one of Canada’s most important and visionary choreographers. She would read that her new…
John Ralston Saul
Renowned Canadian author and philosopher John Ralston Saul will be in Halifax on Tuesday to give a lecture as part of The Canadian Institute of International Affairs’ annual lecture series. The focus of this year’s lecture series is “Wielding Power in a World Without Borders: Exploring Visions of a Fairer World.” The topic of Saul’s…
Mean machines
DaPoPo Theatre Company’s first year would not be complete without a performance of pure science-fiction social commentary. Thursday marks the opening night of Rossum’s Universal Robots. At first, the robots appear to bring an end to working-class blues. They can handle any chore, any task, no matter how toilsome. Programmed solely to work, no one…
SAVAGE LOVE
FTMGWPs, one girl who ruins everything and Dan Savage.
The Pride of Mr. Darcy
There’s a rumour floating around that when the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice first appeared on the A&E network, a television executive asked whether Jane Austen would be available for promotional book signings. Crack all the jokes that you want about the reading habits of American TV executives, but the reality is that Austen, upon…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Practice some dangerous freedom, Scorpio, says Rob Brezsney.
Screw that
I must have been really wicked in a past life because in this one, I’m required to scan news releases. On Tuesday, November 8, I noticed one from Canada NewsWire, a PR outfit that gets paid to send a daily flood of promotional blurbs into newsrooms. The release, from the giant condom maker Durex, claimed…
Ice capades
The area in and around Uniacke Square is famous for all the wrong reasons. The neighbourhood has struggled with a reputation for violence, drug activity, and run-down housing conditions, leaving residents with every excuse to give up on their community. Apparently, the PEP Bro Divas never got that memo. The Divas is a six-woman collective…
Democracy watch
Canadians have learned a few things about Haiti from our mainstream news outlets. We’ve learned that it’s the birthplace of our governor general, Michaelle Jean. We’ve learned it’s been affected by Atlantic storms this hurricane season, and we’ve learned that the UN is playing its part to disarm local gangs. What we haven’t learned is…
Stage developments
Quake It’s hard out here for a kid. Sometimes it’s tough being the new kid. And when you’re the new kid in an MC battle, expect to hear about it. Especially when you’re a 16-year-old high school student. “They say stuff like, ‘Go back to playing with Fisher-Price,’” says Matt Arab, AKA MC Quake, about…
One year later…
Apt Also known as Dave Plowman, MC Apt left Halifax for greener pastures in Toronto this fall to attend sound engineering school. The intellectual rapper officially released the semi-concept album Canvastripper — inspired by reading Dante’s Inferno as a university student — early in the year. Apt has been back in Halifax for shows in…
CSI: Halifax
Of course this simplistic generalization is not wholly without challenge. Especially given that these are hardly gentle times we live in. For some like Rob Furlong, there exists another category, the sort most of us don’t want to get: the bad news call. Over the past few years, these types of calls have been Furlong’s…
Hardcore icon
In life, there are cycles that are constant. Snakes shed their skin four to eight times a year, birds migrate north annually and roughly every two to three years Walter Schreifels starts a hugely influential and underappreciated band and puts out a seminal release. In Halifax to perform a solo show with friends and collaborators…
Blue Steele
Singer/guitarist Keri Steele has difficulty staying comfortable in a band for very long. She started the new age folk group Imaginary Heaven when she was still in her teens, making three albums before moving to Toronto and forming melodic loop-based female quartet Hush Hush. A pair of records later, Steele has once again switched gears,…
Groud Dwell
The Pocket Dwellers rumble through the mountains of Montana following a show in Tofino, BC. “It’s beautiful and desolate, man,” observes MC/vocalist NiGel (AKA Nigel Williams). The rocky landscape hurtling past Williams’s window couldn’t be more appropriate considering the shout-out he gives on “Stop,” the first track of the band’s new album, PD-Atrics: “This is…
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire isn’t notably worse than its predecessors. It’s just harder to put up with at this point. Director Mike Newell keeps up the vendor’s manifesto adhered to by Chris Columbus and Alfonso Cuaron: “Give JK Rowling’s readers what they want. Make sure…
