Whose spirit are you calling fat?
To the editor, In regards to last week’s article “To have and hold on,” in grade 7 I moved to a southern Ontario city and took so much crap for being from NS—from peers, parents and teachers—it scarred me for life. I used to wonder how much shit these people could get into if another…
We heart McNab’s
Dear Coastals, Sunday was my first wedding anniversary. After waking up to the realization I really may be an adult now, my wife and I had an incredible breakfast at a swanky downtown restaurant (name witheld to avoid the image being one of those consumerist trendsetter types). Following that, we took the ferry to Alderney…
Hell hath no fury like Quinpool scorned
To whom it may concern, I’m a member of the Quinpool Road Mainstreet Business Association. I speak for many of the merchants along Quinpool Rd. when I say I was angry and hurt by the horrific article in last week’s Back to School edition (“Neighbourhood watch”). Many of us are regular advertisers in your paper…
Anniversary horribilis
There are plenty of things to hate about the glossy publication that comes inside the massive Sunday edition of the New York Times. For starters, it’s attached to the Times, which any Coast reader knows is leading the corporate right-wing media conspiracy. (Pity those conservatives who think the Times is the official newsletter of the…
Coast to coast
Toronto-based band The Coast will be bringing it to our streets for the first time this weekend. Formerly known as The July 26th Movement, the group recently switched identities following some uncertainty. “Ben likes to say that, first and foremost, The July 26th Movement wouldn’t fit on the drums. But our old name was a…
Stairway to heaven
Well, not exactly, but the new staircase connecting the Seahorse to the Economy Shoe Shop is now operational, with a grand opening scheduled for later this month. “The Seahorse will become more of an extension of the Shoe Shop,” says Argyle Cobblers general manager Gord Lapp. “It will be yet another place to wander when…
Artist depreciation
I spun Mozart’s Greatest Hits recently as I perused a lengthy discussion paper on the development of the SuperCity’s new cultural policy. A Cultural Advisory Committee composed of two city councillors and an assortment of citizens, artists and kulturcrats released the paper in June. To the foreboding strains of Mozart’s famous mass for the dead…
Air supply
The slow throb in your left temple radiates down the back of your neck and into your shoulders. For the past couple of months you can’t seem to shake that low-grade flu and you’ve lost your appetite. No one understands why you’re so sick. Some have suggested it’s all in your head, but the symptoms…
In search of fame
I Google myself all the time. Nothing dirty. It’s just searching my name on Google.ca. Though admitting it feels kind of like letting the cat out of the bag on chronic masturbation. And it’s a similar activity, really — fuelled by self-love, simmered in a feeling of shame that’s, if you’ll pardon the pun, bred…
Modern problems
Let’s say on your way to work every day you follow the same route heading north on Barrington, toward downtown. You pass the curved steel and glass Sexton gym—on Dalhousie campus—every day with no more than a passing glance. With his recently published overview of 50 years (1950-2000) of exemplary architecture in Atlantic Canada, including…
Line drive
Ever since CBC management locked its doors against my 5,500 colleagues and me across Canada five weeks ago, many, many things have broken my heart on a pretty near daily basis. In addition to walking the picket line, I’ve volunteered for other duties, most of them organizational, because I’m good at that, and it gives…
Reality cheque
The stress was like a dull throbbing toothache that wouldn’t go away. Her hair fell out, she chewed off her nails and she lost her appetite. Helen Jackson was in a vice grip of stress and anxiety for three years. It started with a single payday loan. “I was scared. I was ashamed to be…
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
The fight between religion and science in The Exorcism of Emily Rose is mirrored in the movie’s own struggle for respectability. Not content to be “just” a horror movie, the “Based on a True Story” credit is an attempt to legitimize it with a seriousness it doesn’t contain. The effect of applying horror tropes to…
Nothing personal
Add one more talented singer-songwriter to the list of those who call Halifax home. After more than a decade in the local music scene, Norma MacDonald finally releases her first debut solo album, Nothing Is Where It Was, this Saturday at Stage Nine. “I feel like I’m starting something completely new,” the 30-year-old MacDonald says.…
Bistro blues
I have never entered a restaurant and wanted to like it so much as when I first set foot inside Vivo. This small bistro is absolutely lovely. Rich colours, dark woods, and gilt-rimmed mirrors and picture frames give it an opulent look without losing the casual bistro charm. Plenty of natural light floods the dining…
Screen test
Whole New Thing Co-written by and co-starring Cape Breton’s prodigal son Daniel MacIvor, Whole New Thing is about a sexual awakening of a teenage boy (Aaron Webber, making his screen debut). After he experiences his first wet dream, he writes a 1,000-page book about it (complete with illustrations), so his worried hippie mom (Rebecca Jenkins,…
Pearls of wisdom
While the myth about not eating oysters in the months with no “r” in their names is just that, a myth, there’s no doubt that oysters are at their best in fall and winter. This is because they spawn over the summer and, like many of us during breeding season, become unpleasantly soft and mushy.…
Festival express
In 1981, the world of film festivals was very different. Sundance wasn’t even known by the title of Robert Redford’s most famous role. It was The Utah/US Film Festival, just moved from Salt Lake to Park City. The Toronto International Film Festival was five years old, also under its former name, The Festival of Festivals,…
Girl Talk
A young girl—still a virgin—is called a slut simply because she lives in a group home. At the age of 10, another girl overhears her principal whisper “slut” as she walks by in a pair of short shorts. Yet another makes the mistake of kissing a boy and ends up being shunned by her classmates…
Recording soundtracks
Film is a naturally collaborative medium, and much of the best in music is as well. To bring filmmaking bigwigs and music honchos together is such a natural marriage, it’s sort of surprising no one thought of it before. This year’s Atlantic Film Festival dates, September 15 to 24, overlap with the Nova Scotia Music…
Poetry in Motion
November 11, 2004. A couple thousand people come together for a Remembrance Day ceremony at Sullivan’s Pond in Dartmouth. Paul McNeill and Catherine Cooper are among the families and neighbours who have devoted the day to appreciating the men and women who sacrificed everything for their country’s future; or, more precisely, us. After all the…
On the line
When Halifax filmmaker Steven James May set out to document the lives of three women working in the phone sex industry, he knew that he would dealing with some touchy subject matter. Sure enough, in the weeks leading up to his film’s premier at the Atlantic Film Festival on September 22, he was busy working…
On the line
Laura Linney is the perfect amount of famous. Consider the case of Kinsey, the 2004 biopic of controversial sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, for which Linney received her second Academy Award nomination. She gained 25 pounds to play the doctor’s wife. When Renee Zellweger ate herself to a healthy weight for both Bridget Jones films, the…
