All Scrabbled up
Word up, Kelly Perhaps the most surprising thing (besides Peter Kelly’s appearance) at last Saturday’s Scrabble with the Stars was the triple-score word-making prowess of actor John Dunsworth. Holy shit. Like a Scrabble-Jesus sent from above, the game fanatic and board collector laid his hands down on players’ tiles, identifying seven-letter words in seconds, settled…
Kabul closes down on Barrington Street today
If you were down on Barrington during Nocturne, you may have noticed a video projection of a market scene on the Roy Building that wasn’t listed on your program. Mandaee Bazaar is the work of Scott Saunders and Ariel Nasr, who have brought a new view of a bustling Kabul market to broken-down Barrington. The…
Mumford Buss Pass Savior
To the first class-altruistic girl who chased me down because I dropped my bus pass at the Mumford Bus Terminal – who, in her running efforts – tripped and bailed on the pavement – you are an EXCEPTIONAL being! Blown away by your selfless efforts – while also feeling somewhat responsible for your tumble. I…
Honest Cash
THANK YOU to the person who returned the cash left in the PC Bank machine on Quinpool Rd on Saturday morning. My friends thought it was pointless for me to go back and ask if someone had turned it in, but sure enough it was there waiting at the customer service desk. Not only was…
Waitin’ for the Library to open on a Sunday
This is the usual banter as we stand outside the Library doors Sunday pm at 1:55, “well they’re government employees, they won’t open a second earlier than they have to…if this were the military, blah, blah, blah” Here’s my suggestion: close the Library down on Sundays because obviously the service is so bad how could…
Stranded Stanfields
Last Wednesday, while most of us were partying it up at GWAR, New Pornos et al, The Stanfields were staring at a broken-down van in the middle of the Kamloops, BC mountains. They were mid-way on their first cross-country tour when their engine blew. While lead singer Jon Landry is hitching a ride with tourmates…
Pop Explosion Night 5: Wreckage
Saturday morning, I figured I was pretty much a goner. Still in last night’s clothes, my eyes were crusted with shame and indifference. A pair of hands pulled me out of bed and we staggered to the Just Friends Brunch to find out ALL THE FOOD WAS GONE. At 11am. Great news for the brunch…
Have your knife back
To the board: I have that knife you left in my back. As much as I hope the event works out because it is needed, I hope it fails so you can all know how I feel. But don’t worry I will get back at you all by just doing what you’re trying to do…
To 7 years of love
To my wife of 7 years: it has been a joy spending that time with you. You have given me two great son’s you have backed me when no one else will. And with all the odd things I do in life you just shake your head and ask why – but you know why.…
Doogie Howser FUCK YOU!
So I hit a deer last week and end up going through a guard rail and off a bridge (That’ll be in another bitch). Damn lucky I lived through it. I get taken to a hospital north of Halifax, where they did a full assessment, x-rays, gave me some nice drugs to ease my pain,…
Senseless Violence in Metro
From swarming(s) to the pizza delivery guy getting murdered, so happy to be home in good ole Halifax. I thought Edmonton was bad but this place is becoming appalling. Recently my wife was indirectly punched on a transit bus, the young punk was aiming for an older gentleman. I will not sit idle and I…
The Jimmy
Why are you talking in the third person? It’s annoying so fuck off. —Jimmy’s gonna get you
A Gangsta Don’t Need No Motive
A pizza delivery driver was murdered in Dartmouth over the weekend and the police can’t figure out a motive. Let me help. Gangsta’s are looking for street cred. Nobody shoots someone dead for twenty bucks because they happen to be short of cash. They shoot someone dead for twenty bucks because they want to show…
A Bitter Sweet Breakup
Halifax, I know we’re about to break up again, but I’m really going to miss you. We’ve been together for 23 years and I love you more then you’ll ever really know. But it’s me, not you. I need a change of scene and I don’t want you to wait for me, but I’ll come…
Hold Steady love in
To the band and the crowd at the Hold Steady on Friday, that was the best vibe I’ve had at a show in a decade. The band threw it down, and the Halifax crowd picked it up and ran with it. I didn’t expect much from either to be honest, and it turned out to…
This blows my mind
Friday, around noon, I’m driving up from the dockyard and am going straight. There is a red light and I stop. I look across and I see this shit box of a car driven by a young guy and his girlfriend sitting in the passenger side. I already know what he’s going to do. I…
War Crimes
How is throwing a grenade in a firefight in which you are a combatant a war crime? —Gitmofused
Holla-day Shopping
WTF…..the malls and stores are insane! Christmas is exactly two months away and the elf shit has already hit the fan. Buy, buy, buy: Kids running around wild in parking lots, mom’s trying to find which kid is theirs, dad’s eye-fucking the cashier (male or female), Halloween candy mixed with Christmas lights, argh, it’s that…
More grateful than you can imagine
Perhaps you will never take me seriously again… we will likely never laugh like we once did, nor even have a normal, genuinely fun conversation, and I know that is my doing. Seeing as that may never happen, I still want you to know that of all things in this universe I am thankful for,…
Explain this to me
My uncle used to do this peculiar thing while driving. He was concerned about getting a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt, so he would wrap the shoulder strap around his left arm and drive. That way it would APPEAR to the cops that he was weaing one, but he would in fact; be belt-less.…
Rude Rider
To the extremely cute library employee to whom I did not show very good manners nor bus stop etiquette yesterday- my apologies. I was somewhere off in my own little world. By the time I realized you were approaching a bus that may have left without you I had already stepped on and likely appeared…
Fashion Smashion
If you are over three feet Crocs should not been on them. Girls wearing sweatpants, sheer laziness or zero fashion sense. Was there a bad tattoo sale that I was unaware of? Continue the bitch with what irritates you. —Visually Violated
Why did I return to NS?
The ad campaign that ran in the west urged us to return home to lower cost of living, employment and for general happiness. I have been unemployed for two months and can not even get a job at a fast food chain, my rent is just as high as it was in the big city…
I love Dal Engineering Students
Thank you so much for making the hockey game on Friday night so much fun!! You Guys and Gals had so much energy and fun. I really enjoyed sitting next to you, it made my whole night – especially when you got the “wave” started!! 🙂 —The Boa Toting Blonde
An ocean divides us, but we are still connected
Although I am far far away from my fabulous home in Halifax, it is you that keeps me feeling connected. For years we have been best friends, you tell me all the insider secrets, show me pictures of fun events and keep me smiling with your loves and bitches. We have been friends for so…
Sick of this Ant Farm
I am not impressed by one of my neighbors. It’s bad enough that this apartment building is one of the least friendly places I have ever lived, but now there are thieves in our midst as well? Now I have to wonder which of the people that refuse to greet or even acknowledge one another…
So Cute
Ok, this is pretty light fare when it comes to bitching, and is probably a poorly disguised “Psst” but anyway… any dude that sits in his warm home eating his dinner while you wait in the line for hours to get into the show (that is already at capacity, so you’re probably aren’t even going…
I’ve Been a Bad Little Monkey
sad, lazy monkey goes pout pout Hi, you all. How you doing? Caught up on sleep? Headaches gone? Vision cleared? After falling down the fun hole, I’ve clawed back up and I will have my HPX notes for the last three days up on the site by THIS EVENING along with the usual assortment of…
Another smoking bitch…
So I realize that I probably won’t get much sympathy here, but this board exists solely to “bitch” and get things off your chest, right? Let me first explain that I am a former smoker and most of my friends smoke. I have no problem with smokers, I don’t care when people are walking down…
Karma will get you
To the downtown (bar) employee who told the gay military couple to stop acting like a couple on Saturday night: Karma is going to get you. How dare you tell a soldier to stop exercising the very rights and freedoms he signed up to fight for and very possibly has fought for. Someone reported the…
To the yappers in the Quiet Zone at the SMU library:
It’s called the Quiet Zone for a reason. I went there because I couldn’t concentrate at home around my housemates. I didn’t come to listen to you yak, in your regular decibel voices, about which teachers are assholes or not. It makes it even worse because I have ADD. The rest of the library is…
Me so strong
No pain, no gain when you two guys are working and spotting each other hard at a downtown gym, right? Just please don’t moan like you’re in labour every time you do a sit-up or a triceps pull. It’s obnoxious, and puts the wrong imagery in my head when I’m trying to focus too, ya…
Bill s-10
Caught with as little as six plants go directly to jail!! What happens when people are caught with kiddy porn or video assaulting someone – shouldn’t they go directly to jail? Or is everyone not entitled to a fair trial? —Tired of our legal system
Metro Transit schedule sucks
read the article about metro transfit… guess what Friday & Saturday I took #4 & #2 to Scotia Square hoping to transfer & when my bus arrive the #1 pulls out and doesn’t wait for people. Plus the revised book that the was paid for with tax payers money is wrong. I lived in ontario…
Eau du Toilet
You two are the reason people use the phrase “Dirty Hippie”. She-Hippie, you smell like a sweaty foot with a yeast infection and He-Hippie you smell like patchouli and ass. I am not surprised to learn from a friend that your bathtub (your ONLY bathtub or shower) is only used as an ashtray. I would…
I just realized…
Dammit! Sorry.—I love you
To the man in the black suit:
You were really rocking out at Pacifico on Friday. It was nice to see someone else who was just there to dance and have a good time. Just thought you should know that you’re awesome. Rock on, suit man, rock on. —Girl in the blue dress
I’m so glad you are my sweetie-sweet
Spoony spoon? —Schmoopy
Dr. Loves
To all those paper marking, tweed wearing, glasses cleaning, graying around the temples man-profs who chuckle at their own jokes and whose tangents are athletic: you make smart sexy! Your office hours make us, the students who swoon at your comments in the margins, think indecent things. Keep giving those brain-gasms! —Lover of the suede…
#1 Pigs
To the drunk guys on the #1 Bus Saturday night heading home from Oasis: NO one wants to hear your loud, disgusting sexist comments on the size of women’s bushes, whose a bitch/slut, who fucked who, or what chicks who take birth control look like. You made everyone uncomfortable and pissed off. I’m shocked that…
Stop with your stealing
I have a paper subscription, I know stone age during the time of digital versions. This week I have managed to read the paper twice, because a person living in the same building keeps stealing it. Seriously, it is clearly marked for my apartment. If I don’t get to it before 7am it is gone.…
Thank you, thank you, thank you
I wanted to send out some love to everyone who helped me after I was hit by a car. From the driver who stopped and called 911, to the nursing student to stopped to help even though she had just been passing, the paramedics, the cops, the firefighters who helped me take my leather coat…
Thank you to a couple of Knightly Northenders
I was so drunk on Friday night, all alone and scratched up. My head was in a far away place, I could have easily been taken advantage of if it weren’t for the kind people walking their wee little dog and picking me up off of the sidewalk. You led me into your house and…
Is it any wonder?
Halifax’s recent very poor showing as a city that attracts business should have been expected. Would you open a business in a city where spending by council is totally out of control? Where they seem to put all their effort into finding the next economic black hole to dump tax dollars into? Where tax increases…
Not your personal blow-up doll
I’m fucking tired of your 3-in-the-morning calls, asking me how or what I’m doing… yeah, right. You are out there trying to slut it up with other girls, that YOU think like you, and when you get shot down (over and over and over) you come crawling back to me, whenever the fuck you want.…
Why the convention centre sucks, part 4
We have touched on the documents behind the convention centre proposal before. Part 2 and Part 3 of this series looked at the new jobs and tax dollars that are supposed to come with a new convention centre—what the consultants’ reports say the benefits will be, and how centre supporters overstate these benefits. Those earlier…
Flaunt it on Windsor
You can’t miss this place: It’s the house with the enormous circular window in the front, just near The Last Word bookstore. It’s Flaunt Hair Salon (2166 Windsor Street, 425-0020), just opened last week by Kim Grant and her associates. Grant has been doing hair for 22 years, most recently at Spirit Spa. The new…
The Injured Gull of Barrington
Thanks to all the folks who stopped to check on me while I lay mortally wounded on the sidewalk last Thursday. And thanks to those who took the time to call for assistance. And special thanks to the folks from Hope for Wildlife Society who took me to the vet. I’ll be seeing you all…
Pay raise for city council
Any time a east coast union tries to get wage parity with the west coast, we are always turned down for several reasons. How did the city manage to sneak this one by? I’m sure federal and provincial employees would like to hire the same arms length review committee. —Ex-pat
You’re a bully!!
Your fiance should have left you years ago. I used to care, but I’ve stopped trying to encourage the split because he’s become spineless. Recently I heard of a new development: you drawing up a contract outlining the need for him to be more Christian and have more God in his life, then asking him…
Occupational love
Thanks to your lectures I know [mostly] everything about OHS and workplace safety… You are great at keeping our attention (although monday mornings it may not seem like it), and your youthful attitude is something this university desperately needs. Add to that you are effing sexy ! You mentioned you read the coast so I…
Rescue me!
It was one of those weeks where I lost my keys, memory stick, & knapsack all on separate occasions. To say I was under stress would be an understatement. Then I lost my purse at Tims but was to busy to notice. Amazingly this wonderful woman found it, and my cell phone, called my husband…
Universe
Sometimes when I’m really down in the dumps a little bit of magic happens: someone knocks on my door or something that seems like a disaster ends up being a good opportunity. Keep it coming. —Cautiously Optimistic
A big eff you
To whoever smashed those pine-cone-on-wood-with-hooks-and-clever-sayings, the ones you can pay whatever you want for them hanging from telephone poles around citadel hill: The guy who takes care of those is freaking awesome nice. I hope you use the money you stole to buy drugs and overdose. —Saddened
For Our Men and Women of the Canadian Armed Forces
You were let down so very badly by one of your own. But you do not need to distance yourself from him in our minds. He did that, when he abandoned all human decency in his conduct. Your honour is unsullied, your professionalism unquestioned and your service appreciated. Thank you, all. —Proud Army Brat
Bus Driver Blues
I don’t take the bus as often as a lot of people do. I can get lifts to and from work most of the time but end up taking the bus home about 5 or 6 times a month. Even with my limited bus rider experience, you have fucked up so many times I simply…
You won’t read this anyway…
I’ve got a lot of reasons to be angry at a lot of people but I’m angriest at you. What gives you the right to comment officially on what kind of father I was? I wouldn’t do what you did to my worst enemy (and I actually had that opportunity) By the way, when you…
Video Store in Spryfield
I just found out you guys are closing, and I just wanted to thank you all. I hate that we’re losing a Canadian store while the American one survives, but I just wanted to say that you guys are great, always friendly and helpful. Me and my family will miss you. —Loyal Customer
Mouse Ears
To the lovely bitcher whose posts I usually enjoy, enough with the mouse ears. <3 —Your friend
4% Are you Serious
If the media is correct, the Mayor of HRM has been awarded a 4% pay raise, might I as a taxpayer ask why? Councillors have also been awarded with pay raises, again I ask why? —C.W.
A Love-ly Welcome
I am new to this beautiful city called Halifax. From the second I arrived, I have experienced nothing but friendliness, respect, and all around LOVE from every single person I have encountered here. Thanks Hali for being an amazing new home to me. I know everyone and everything will just keep getting better from here!…
Mobile Speed Bump “I do the speed limit”
Dear mobile speed bumps and pace cars – Stop being such hypocrites. Did you put that sticker on your back bumper for 15 minutes of glory only to forget that it was there? I would try and catch up to tell you what idiots you are but that would mean I was speeding too. Do…
New Porno Dancers!!
To the beautiful and fun dancers in the liquor cage, you made my night!!! If only more people had your energy, the world would be a better place. xo —Nekoface
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Guess where? But why? —Censorship
Does no one have principles anymore?
I’m pretty bummed. Just to be the nicest mom ever, last week my awesome mother got me a Coach scarf. It was white with all kinds of colourful stripes and I loved it. Monday night I went to the movies and I accidentally left it in the theatre, and when I went back it was…
Shut Up Already!
To the chick in the cubicle next to me: stop singing every fucking song that comes on the radio opera style – leave your vibrato at home when you come to work it really sounds like shit and drives me fucking nuts!!! —Hum if you have to
Irresponsible Dog Owners
To the idiots with the viscous dog out loose on Oxford St. on Sept 14: I am so disgusted that you allowed your vicious dog to attack & bite my dog on our walk six weeks ago. I called dog control on your ass as this has happened before. I had to take my dog…
Second Hand Smoke Surprise
I fu**ing hate walking out of my building or down the side walk only to have someone lite up a cigarette and exhale in my face. I know it is getting cold, but take a few more steps away from the front door please!! I have developed a new plan! I am going to walk…
Go do your homework
To the stupid-ass punk who tried to jump me as I was riding down Mumford Road this evening: 1)If you’re going to do something illegal, don’t do it at 8:50 p.m., when the street is full of shoppers leaving the Mall. These people are otherwise known as “witnesses.” 2) When the guy on the bike…
BED BUGS!!!
We all need to contact our HRM councillors by email or phone and demand that they implement some kind of treatment i.e pesticide that will kill them. At this point of fear of getting them and bringing them into MY home, I’d rather have poisons in the air knowing it kills them then suffer from…
The Library
To the dude sitting beside me in the library at the computers: Your music on your headphones can be heard by all around. I do not want to have to listen to blaring Lady Gaga in the library. Also, I don’t want to sit here and watch your damned stuff while you go out for…
Seeing Red
To all the drivers out there, it’s OK to take your foot off the brake pedal once in a while. Going around a corner doesn’t require foot on brake pedal at all times. —!
The undeserved bird flip – You’re actually #1
I would like to apologize to the woman in the military uniform at Tim Horton’s the other day to whom I flipped the bird at after she pointed out I was driving in the out lane. I realized my mistake in mid flip, not that anyone deserves such a response, and would like to say…
What a wonderful whirl: Marshall McLuhan @ 99+
Marshall McLuhan biographer Terrence Gordon launches his travelling lecture series at SMU to mark the leadup to the 100th anniversary of the media guru’s birth.
Oddjects appear on Barrington
It seems odd that even though most of the product available is sourced in Southeast Asia, the new shop has a distinctly classy European feel. That may carry over from the former tenants of this Starfish Property, Peepshow Girly Boutique, or it could be the inspiration of Eric Claus, who co-owns Oddjects (1717 Barrington Street,…
Love to love you!
Lovin’ & Bitchin’ peeps! Want to get your hand son a pair of run of engagement passes to see RED, featuring Helen Mirren as a retired government assassin with a big gun? If so send an email to contests@thecoast.ca with the subject line “Red” by 4:30PM* today. *Winners will be contacted by end of day…
HPX Day Two: Bloody Wednesday
It’s already at that point in ‘Splode Week 2010 where you start to lose track of what you saw and where you went. I actually had to take a look at my hand and use all the residual stamps and stuff to figure out what happened first next last etc. It’s like a road map…
Learning about Fathers and Sons
The Neptune studio production of Don Hannah’s Fathers and Sons begins with actor John Fitzgerald Jay as a giant, slightly creepy baby gurgling in his playpen while is father Hilt (played by Theo Pitsiavas) talks about his longing to be close to his son. Hilt wants to experience the happy home life he missed out…
Score: A Hockey Musical almost misses the net
A teenaged pond hockey prodigy (Noah Reid) defies his hippie parents and his own pacifist ethics to join a junior team, catapulting him to improbable stardom and helping him become a man. And everybody sings. If it took itself even one iota more seriously, Score would miss the net, as the hockey action isn’t convincing…
Sitting in on The Japanese Film Festival
The one-night-only Japanese Film Festival screens two films tonight, free and open to anyone who’s interested. “It’s to be able to bring Japanese films to the large screen in communities where there may be less of an opportunity to see the original versions of these films,” says Julie d’Eon, an employee in the Cultural Affairs…
HPX spotlight: Sloan performs Twice Removed
It’s easy to forget, now, how long it took Sloan’s sophomore jinx-defying classic to find its audience. Before Napster—before Netscape version one, even—Sloan zigged when they were supposed to zag, and delivered the wrong record to their record-label masters. There was no World Wide Web to fall back on, no Plan B to end-run the…
Input/Output plugs in
As soon as you step into Eyelevel Gallery, parts start moving. You hear a whooshing sound to your left, and look over to see what looks like a simulated car wash made up of winter wear. At the back left of the gallery you hear a faint clicking noise coming from found transmissions on FM…
Halifax Pop Explosion on parade
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21 Tasseomancy The Company House, 10pm, $10 Sisters Sari and Romy Lightman play the Pop Explosion in mid-transformation. They’ve already changed their band name from Ghost Bees to Tasseomancy, the title of their excellent 2008 release. The changes are going deeper, explains Sari Lightman by email: “We’re focused on developing our skills as…
You have no clit, not two clits
Q My husband and I have had an open marriage for the last two years. Up until five months ago, it was working beautifully. At that point, however, I was sexually assaulted by a former partner. Since that incident, I cannot stand sex with my husband. I completely flip out when he tries to initiate…
Ray Bear returns
It was the Crown Diner and Atlantic Steak and Lobster, but now the space with the great harbour view at Salter and Granville is called Mix Fresh Kitchen (5171 Salter Street, 429-9571), the new lunch and dinner eatery from Ray Bear. And after having been open only a few weeks, it’s already buzzing at lunchtime.…
Forces of Nature only engages in hero worship
David Suzuki’s life journey, from his childhood in World War II-era Canadian internment camps for Japanese residents to his career as a scientist, television star and eco-warrior, certainly merits a biographical documentary. However, both Suzuki and filmgoers deserve better than this fawning, superficial effort from Sturla Gunnarson, which doesn’t reveal much about the 75-year-old that…
Brunching with Just Friends
Yesterday’s gone, you’re hung over and in need of a refuel before the last Pop Explosion night—all signs point to the Just Friends brunch, which’ll fill you up with food prepared and served by the multi-talented musicians. Laura Peek & The Winning Hearts, Hymm and Brent Randall will all be doing their own sets, as…
Five is fine
It is pouring rain when I walk into the Five Fishermen Grill, which opened in June in the space once occupied by the Little Fish Restaurant & Oyster Bar. The host leads us to our choice of table; we sit by the bright window overlooking the rain-whipped Grand Parade. The dull chill outside is a…
The Ataris flashback
Slide your broken promise ring back on that finger—The Ataris pick up your Pop Explosion pieces Wednesday night for a high school reunion-infused set. The Indiana-based band proudly states that its online presence is personally maintained by its members, but that sadly translated to the sound of crickets in response to interview requests. We’ll dry…
Eeny, meeny, miny, Pop
Three days left. Fifteen venues. A shitton of bands. The sum: too many choices to be made in the next 72 hours. If spontaneity’s your thing, tuck this geographical list of bar-only Halifax Pop Explosion venues (there are nine) in your pocket today, so that when you—or someone you know—-inevitably arrives at the Paragon at…
Monster mash-up
Two horror sequels opening in the next two weeks will, if they follow the lead of their predecessors, take radically different approaches to scaring audiences. The annual Saw sequel (October 29) will aim for the stomach with gross-out gore, the blood spatter flying in 3D this time out. Paranormal Activity 2 (October 21), meanwhile, will…
Jackass 3D purely hilarious
Yes, I will say that Johnny Knoxville and co.—the titular jackasses, accelerating their decrepitude for our amusement—have reached the summit of their art with their employment of 3D technology. If these fellas are receiving lethal-looking levels of force in service to their audience, then it stands to reason that the final frontier of their process…
HPX spotlight: The Hold Steady
If The Hold Steady are not America’s greatest rock band—and there’s a case to be made for it—they’re certainly its most deceptively great one. A casual listener may wonder why their five albums of seemingly familiar power chords and piano histrionics have earned such cultish devotion. Sure, the band’s ability to suture the punk/classic rock…
Taking a Return to El Salvador
It’s difficult to assign the right word to describe the aftermath of a brutal, long conflict such as El Salvador’s civil war (1980-1992), which claimed 75,000 lives. It is hard to say if El Salvador is recovering—implying that wounds incurred during the war are, in fact, healing—or if it is merely moving on, meaning that…
HPX spotlight: Radio Radio
Radio Radio shows must produce two by-products, “sweat and smiles,” according to Gabriel Louis Bernard Malenfant, one of three members of the band (along with Alexandre Arthur Bilodeau and Jacques Alphonse Doucet). Much has been made of Radio Radio’s Acadian identity. The three hail from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The bio on their label…
Learning with It’s Kind of a Funny Story
The writing and directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck swings for the mainstream fences with a setting—a mental ward—that sounds more suited to its first film, Half Nelson. But it’s actually an earnest coming-of-age story toeing the saucy-sweet Juno line, including animated sequences, copious indie rock, cable-minted stars and a fantasy dance number.…
HPX spotlight: Tokyo Police Club
In 2006, Tokyo Police Club’s A Lesson in Crime EP—16 minutes of speedy, punchy indie rock gold—quickly made the Newmarket, Ontario, foursome one of North America’s hottest buzz bands. Four years later, the harsh internet hype cycle having moved on, the band has been able to record and tour its excellent second album, Champ, on…
HPX spotlight: Cursed Arrows
It’s a sadly familiar story by now: band forms in Halifax; band gets big in Halifax; band leaves Halifax for the verdant and populous musical pastures of Montreal/Toronto. When any band does the reverse, it’s noteworthy; when the band is Cursed Arrows, it’s an extra bonus. “It just seemed like the right time,” says Ryan…
HPX spotlight: Handsome Furs
Much in the way that Dan Boeckner’s singing voice often sounds strained yet kinetic on record, does his voice over the phone. Boeckner and wife Alexei Perry, who play together as Handsome Furs, took time out from a band practice/recording session in Montreal to chat. Perry’s voice, unlike her husband’s, is hardly road-worn; she’s rather…
Never Let Me Go quietly devastating
This adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel gathers momentum stealthily, which makes its ultimate emotional heft all the more startling. Kathy (Carey Mulligan) is the odd girl out in a love triangle that includes childhood friends Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (Keira Knightley), but the trio is also bound by a shared, pre-ordained destiny—death via systematic…
Free Will Astrology
SCORPIO (October 23-November 21) “If you’re strong enough there are no precedents,” said novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think that describes you in the immediate future, Scorpio. I bet you won’t have to answer to ghosts or pay homage to the way things have always been done. You’ll be free to ignore icons that the…
Zuppa meets the market
Zuppa Theatre’s new play will open with Jasper (Stewart Legere), staring meditatively ahead, a piano accompanying his silence. It will be in the basement of the Historic Farmers’ Market, so the lights will be dim and the audience crammed all around him, part of the scene itself. He’ll start slow, with a monologue, but then…
Transit opportunity
To their great credit, Halifax councillors have over the last few years made the hard political choices needed to fund an ambitious expansion of Metro Transit, resulting in the growing Link system, establishing rural routes, building bigger terminals and, most importantly, bringing 15 new articulated buses into service over each of three years, starting this…
Pop Explosion Night One
Last night was the best “first” night of Halifax Pop Explosion in my personal memory. Others who have been around here longer might disagree. But the one-two punch of a mind-blowing Paragon performance by Kylesa plus a glass-smashing, moshy, screamy, drunky Mark Sultan set at Gus’ Pub will have me smiling and giggling through my…
