Ten Years After

Do you remember March 19, 1996? I do. That was the night I saw Heather Nova perform at the Sidetrack Café. She was quite amazing (even live, her voice was pure and clear), but the most memorable part of the night was probably when she told the unusually loud and obnoxious table right in the front of the stage to "shut the #@&% up". (My guests and I were sitting stage right, midway back, in a booth.) She had a cellist as part of her band — too cool!

Incidentally, Heather Nova's new album, Redbird, is currently garnering strong positive reviews. Too bad it hasn't been released in Canada! Instead, it's available only as a rather pricey import.

Went on a bit of a CD binge over the weekend and ended up with, among other items, the 2006 Juno nominees disc. It's quite a good compilation, as those things go (although keep in mind that I have a large shelf of greatest hit / anthology / retrospective discs, so my opinion may not be entirely reliable).

A friend recently remarked that the Arcade Fire disc Funeral is "OK" — OK?!? (Hey, have you heard about the interrobang? Look here... ) Then she told me she preferred the Death Cab for Cutie disc Plans! Sigh. Insert witty Gertrude Stein remark about genius going unrecognized in its own backyard...

Oh, to have hair like Pete Burns, ca. 1987...

Meanwhile ... Happy Spring!

Here's a great new word: pronic. It refers to a number that is the product of two consecutive numbers: for example, 2 (1 x 2), 6 (2 x 3), 12 (3 x 4), 20 (4 X 5), 30 (5 X 6), and so on. There are apparently 99 pronic numbers below 10,000. The synonym for pronic is heteromecic.

(What a great day today is now. We've learned something!)

Ten most recently played songs on iTunes:

1. Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran
2. Bathwater - No Doubt
3. Steppin' Out - Joe Jackson
4. Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers
5. Straight from the Heart - Bryan Adams
6. You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) - Dead Or Alive
7. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) - The Arcade Fire
8. I'm the Only One - Melissa Etheridge
9. Mysterious Ways (remixed) - U2
10. You Can't Hurry Love - Phil Collins

(And now you're covered for tomorrow, too.)

I have too much marking to do. And other stuff too. Think I'll go to sleep now and avoid it all for a few more hours... Did I mention I've almost kicked my little antidepressant addiction? A few more of the dr's wicked tablets and then I'll be back to my normal state of weird. Oh how I've missed my insanity.

"The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished." — Daniel W. Davenport

Leslie (because the night)

"If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster." —Isaac Asimov