The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos by Lorette C. Luzajic Handymaiden Editions, 2006

Spilling the Beans- the Great Soy Deception

It never crossed my mind that soy - a favourite health food - might be toxic and dangerous. It wasn't the first time. Bottled water, margarine, and gluten grains all come to mind. But soy? The wonder bean?

What if I said that those fancy words are actually toxins and the soya bean is naturally loaded with all of them? What if I told you that big business soy ran campaigns like Soy 2000 to convince us that these antinutrients were beneficial? What if I told you that soy is not a complete protein, is not widely used in Asia, and is incredibly dangerous for human consumption? What if I told you that the Food and Drug Administration lists soy as a poisonous plant?

Read more:
http://gremolata.com/soytrouble.htm

Crad Kilodney’s Brilliant Book, Putrid Scum

Geist Magazine said there were ‘few rewards’ in Putrid Scum, and though they conceded that he’d written some interesting short stories over the years, he ‘bottomed out on this one.’ I couldn’t believe my eyes because it’s clear that the Geist staff didn’t get this book at all. Because it’s Absolut Crad. It’s the treasure trove where we see his softer side- seriously! - the one I think I glimpse occasionally across the table at Swiss Chalet. A remarkable man. He is not a painter or a southerner (though he did dabble in collage and comes from Queens) but in a way, Crad’s our northern Outsider Artist. He did it his way. He got to be a lot more famous than the hosts of journalism grads, the nameless minions like myself with stories of the week: Cats and Secondhand Smoke. How to Market Your New Marketing Pamphlet. Phil Butrimskly Plays Guitar at the Rivoli. Remember us? Of course not.

Read More:
http://literaryaddict.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/in-which-the-author-is-blown-away-by-crad-kilodney%e2%80%99s-putrid-scum/


Nadine McInnis’s Two Hemispheres

There’s nothing more fascinating than madness. Once, I wondered how a mind could come unhinged: now, with a bit of firsthand experience and a few decades’ observations, I know everybody’s crazy.

Nadine McInnis shares this fascination, and reveals her own melancholic illness in Two Hemispheres, an exquisite collection of poems from Brick Books.

That artists write poetry about their depression is nothing new: the hurt heart is all of literature. But the elegant and insightful way the poet weaves her own experience of despair into deeply intuitive conjecture of others’ madness is nothing short of brilliant.

Read more:
http://literaryaddict.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/nadine-mcinniss-two-hemispheres/

Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto
For 35 years, MCCT has been at the front lines of social justice, providing a safe place for all people to form community and celebrate faith. Global Connections is a brand new initiative in which MCCT invites friends worldwide who cannot participate locally to be part of its community. I am thrilled to be a part of this project!

Read the newsletter:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Changing Gears: Molloy’s Auto Repair
“Nothing like a few unexpected bends in the road to shock you into finding your way home. Sometimes there’s a subtle change of direction, but if you are like LaurieAnn Campbell, changing gears is more radical.

Recently, she was a thriving business woman in bustling Oakville, heavily active in her city, and president of the Oakville Chamber of Commerce. One day she woke up and found she’d bought an auto repair shop in teeny-tiny Stirling, Ontario (just outside of Belleville), was studying to be a mechanic herself, and had a bunch of goats and a donkey.”

Read more:
http://www.womencandoanything.com/content/view/410/71/

I Have an Idea: Now What?
“Poor Marge Simpson—she’s tried real estate, carpentry, pretzel sales, popsicle-stick art and the police force, but always ends up dejected. Marge has plenty of ideas but none of them ever see fruition.

Then there’s a different Marj. WCDA Business Member Marj Sawers, the dynamo of Business Connectory, started selling snack-sized cups of handpicked blueberries to train passengers when she was eight. Later, she tried wedding shows and planning, trendspotting, connecting businesses with services, website hosting, connecting neighbours online and mentoring. And she still does it all!

I bet if we took a random poll and asked women if they ever feel like the first Marge, every last one of us would raise her hand.”

Read more:
http://www.womencandoanything.com/content/view/369/285/

Leslie Ann Coles: The Eyes Behind Toronto’s Female Eye Film Festival
“Leslie Ann Coles is the kind of woman who finds more hours in a day than the rest of us. She dances, arranges and attends endless workshops and panel discussions, acts, writes, directs and produces films, plans festive soirees around writers and artists, directs the annual Female Eye Film Festival (FeFF) and oh, raises three teenagers…”

Read more:
http://www.womencandoanything.com/content/view/379/283/

Love and Noodles in the Killing Fields

“It's late Sunday night in Toronto and I'm walking past Gerrard Street's Angkor Restaurant. Amid the feverish hodgepodge of colourful décor sits Chef Chandra, his back to the window, all alone, staring motionless into the fish tank. The picture is something sad and lonely out of an Edward Hopper painting. Though the scene is brightly lit through a public window, I feel I have witnessed something private and solemn, and feel embarrassed.

The Girl with Chef Chandra of Toronto's Angkor Restaurant

The stark picture is a direct contrast to a bustling dinner a group of us shared not two hours earlier. Dashing in a shimmery patterned metallic blouse fit for Cambodian royalty, Chef Chandaramony Eang had served us his finest cuisine. The wonderful exotic aromas of kaffir lime, lemongrass, coconut, garlic, fish sauce and peanut simmered in the air, and the noisy clatter of pots and pans clank behind the din of our table's laughter and chitchat. Chef Chandra proudly brought out dish after dish of spectacular food, and his wide smile and distinctly jovial mannerisms belied so much pride in his food. There'd be no way to guess that this same man was imprisoned and tortured for four years, that his body is filled with landmine fragments, that he walked for weeks to make his escape from the Killing Fields into Thailand, and that he never saw most of his family or his nameless sweetheart again.”

Read more:
http://gremolata.com/chefchandra.htm

This Little Bird by Allison Crowe
“The plucky do-it-yourself songstress  Allison Crowe was just a wee babe when  she decided to do things the way she  wanted them. That’s how Rubenesque  Records was born. Fans of Joni Mitchell  and Jann Arden will be delighted to  discover another incredible Canadian  songstress. This Little Bird, Crowe’s third album (sixth, if you  count her first two EPs and a double  live), should give her the wide audience  she deserves.”

Read more:
http://www.allisoncrowe.com/press/07092401.html

An Interview with Writer Extraordinaire, Ariel Gore
“Ariel Gore is a woman who took life by the balls, and yanked. Novelist Marc Acito called her “an adventurer, the Indiana Jones of literature.” She has raised a little hell and a lot of eyebrows with her gritty ability to look reality in the face without flinching. Gore, also known as Hip Mama, is something of a guru to her unexpected niche market -- young, new, single, or alternative moms -- ever since her daughter Maia happened while Ariel was a teenager.

Forget the “you can’t” mentality and public gossip: Gore launched the Hip Mama zine and a collection of parenting diaries for the real world, where chaos and joy mingle like old friends. Gore talked to Bookslut in 2005 about the mother lode. Late last year, she had another child, but now that she’s respectably thirty-something, it was her writing manual that ruffled a few feathers. The button-down old guard may wonder who the hell this socially awkward, sexually ambiguous, tattooed stick of dynamite is, and why she’s telling us what to do.”

Read more:
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2008_02_012336.php

999 Borats on the Wall: Prodigy Artist Oli Goldsmith
“Oli Goldsmith is the first to admit that he has a few screws loose. He was a few clowns short of the circus long before he decided to create 999 portraits of Borat, a laborious oeuvre that has many shaking their heads. Goldsmith is probably the brightest crayon in the box! Goldsmith’s maniacal commitment to production and his early successes are the envy of every living artist. What other pop culture junkie could boast prestigious positions like “Creative Director” before they could legally bar hop? Few artists even get gigs, and Goldsmith’s been sought after by galleries, brand builders, and major entertainment studios like Sony and Miramax since he was 16. Goldsmith also received six Muchmusic Video Award nominations, and two Juno nominations in regards to his artwork for popular band “Our Lady Peace”, a Protégé Honors Award, and a YTV Achievement Award. He then received the much-coveted Artist in Residency at Toronto’s Drake Hotel. The darling of new media, Goldsmith’s creativity reigns through Canadian canvas, collage, video, music, the printed page and more.

Just when there seems to be no more room for anyone else, and no possible way to squeeze more projects into a gallery and cyber spaces, Goldsmith really went insane. He woke up one day and thought, ‘Hey, I’m going to create one thousand portraits of Borat’. Welcome to art history.”

Read more:
http://stylerepublicmagazine.com/999b.html

Year of the Rat (Rediscovering Queen Crosbie)
“I’ll tell you a small detail about my madness. I’m obsessed with magical signs. I see them everywhere, and it is what I love most about my life. Without ethereal, impossible, beautiful synchronicity, life would be meaningless and cruel. It doesn’t matter to me if that’s ‘real’ or not. It is what I do to keep my psyche alive. And so, you see, I have ‘fun with fate’ games, small, pleasant, harmless rites that guide me along my discovery walks. These games of mine make connection out of random, disparate things.

So this is all how it came about that I’m rereading the amazing Lynn Crosbie’s Queen Rat. I noted that this is New Year’s Day for Year of the Rat. The Asian astrology system says we each have traits or lessons to be found in our year of birth’s animal, and by chance this year’s animal is the same as the year I was born.

My interest in astrology is fleeting and my knowledge limited, but like many curious, I check my magic signs and numbers to see what they have to say about me. I picked up Queen Rat to honour in some small, random way the New Year for my sign. There was no connection in this tiny ritual except the word “rat” but the way I roll is this: “in the beginning was the word.” I believe in incredible things.”

Read more:
http://todaystoronto.com/content/view/228/30/

A Journalist Profile
“Words matter- they tell important news, and the telling depends on accuracy, research, investigation, and human reaction. Words convey more than information, however- they reflect emotions and journeys, and they conjure new ideas and spark controversies. I was born with a pen in one hand and a QWERTY in the other. Indeed, I feigned a cough quite frequently in kindergarten so that I could stay at home and type out short stories on my sister’s Fisher Price typewriter. I didn’t miss much at school- I could already read, and I was already learning about cultures, ciphers, and secret rooms through the adventures of Nancy Drew.”

Read more:
http://www.medialin.com/maj/llmeet.html

She’s So Unusual: Vince’s Vintage Vaults Queen DonnaRama’s Early Days of Reign

“It’s an ordinary Sunday night in Toronto’s gay village, and as usual, Woody’s, the place to see and be seen, is hopping with proud and hopeful thirtysomethings. In the swirl of tobacco smoke and the din of clanking glasses and dangling conversations, everything is as it should be.
	Donnarama and I are mutual fans - here we were as just wee little things!

Everything, that is, except for the spectacle of Linda Blair writhing on stage in a skanky grey nightgown. Everything except for Scream’s grim reaper hacking away at notoriously weird drag queen Donnarama. Especially strange in an almost all-men’s bar is the proliferation of grenadine-soaked tampons flying across the room at Prom Queen Carrie.

There’s something sick and perverse about the whole thing, but secretly guests at Woody’s are thrilled that they don’t have to live through another Sunday night of Bette Midler impersonations, another night of somebody squeezed into a white mini singing I Feel Like a Woman.

But then, Donnarama is always a little over the top. If she decides to do a B-movie themed drag show, she is the only one who can.”

Read more:
http://todaystoronto.com/content/view/219/30/

PAWS for Charity
“Small business owners agree that, like a marriage, partnerships work best when both parties come out further ahead than when they worked on their own. With PAWS for Charity, four enterprising women ensure that pet owners, pets and the breast cancer research division of Canadian Cancer Society all benefit—as well as themselves.

It started with a dog treat

 The brainchild of The Barking Biscuit Company’s Sara Harley, it all began with Crunch for a Cure. Creating all-natural handmade dog treats was a switch after nearly two decades in banking, but just a few years after her start-up, Harley won an award for Most Innovative Business in Ontario. Because breast cancer had taken her mother, and after a scare with a lump in her own breast that was thankfully benign, Harley introduced Crunch for a Cure cookies, donating 25% of proceeds to the Canadian Cancer Society. She thought a group of like-minded businesswomen could help each other.”

Read more:
http://www.womencandoanything.com/content/view/364/283/

Death is the Icing on the Cake: Jerry Langton’s Iced-Crystal Meth, the Biography of North America’s Deadliest New Plague

“Ever hear a speed addict tell you meth makes you smarter? It seems to be a popular delusion, even among those who had (or once had) a reasonable level of intelligence. Just before they start moaning about hidden cameras and microphones, they tell you how their IQ jumped 30 points. It’s easy to laugh at the obvious incongruity, yet anyone who has loved someone whose life was slam-dunked by methamphetamine knows it’s not funny. They know it’s incredibly difficult to get help, and that recovery is pretty much a delusion, no matter how hard the user tries.”

Read more:
http://todaystoronto.com/content/view/100/30/

Two Naughty Hotties Sipping Wine in the Bathtub Reading Philip Larkin
“Imagine a six-foot blonde with power curves – the most buoyant breasts ever made- curled up on a small couch, pulling a thin white lacy sweater against herself. She stares up at you through smart and sleepy baby blues and purrs out: “You know, I just love Philip Larkin.”
She says it casually, but there’s an appetite there, not hunger, really, perhaps desire. I’m mesmerized, I lower my eyes and my cheeks are flushing. I’ve never heard of Larkin. No, not true. Heard of, probably. I can’t think at all right now. Whatever: it’s not too familiar. I’m hearing it now, and when Maevey mews like this, musing, you do what she tells you. You want it too, whatever it is.”

Read more:
http://literaryaddict.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/two-naughty-hotties-sipping-wine-in-the-bathtub-while-reading-philip-larkin/

Reaching for the Prize
“You’re at a holiday cocktail party, and you’re thrilled to get to talk to an inspiring consultant that you’ve been hoping to meet for years. You’d love to pick his brain and find out more about how he got started. Chatting amicably, you’re certain he’s impressed with some of your ideas. Then he asks if you’ve read the new Man Booker winner and what you think about it. You draw a complete blank. The last book you read was Hop on Pop, before your son’s bedtime the night before.”

Read more:
http://www.growfolio.com/read/

Review of Adrian Fowler’s March Hare Anthology
“The March Hare Anthology is the kind of book you leave casually atop your table while sipping a pint of Keith’s Red in hopes that someone will walk by, take note, and join you in pointing out favourite poems or newly discovered writers. There’re plenty of delicious tidbits to relish and dissect until the wee hours over a few shots of good liquor.”

Read more:
http://poetryreviews.ca/2007/12/02/the-march-hare-anthology-edited-by-adrian-fowler/

Best Site for Canadian Poetry
“I cringe when I recall an incident so many years ago in New Orleans, reading poetry for quarters on Bourbon Street.  I fancied myself a wandering bard, a poetic luminary, a traveler without the confines of society’s dictates of what home should mean. In reality, I was perhaps just a delusional street kid at worst and hippie at best, but it stung nonetheless when an irate passerby, with more important margarita and daiquiri matters to attend to, hissed at me that I should get a job. It was a significant chance for me to defend poetry’s importance in illuminating diverse perspectives of humanity, but I flubbed it by sputtering out something about poetry being work. “That’s not work,” the man yelled. “It’s frivolous!”

And work it ain’t: few poets have pocketed more than a few ten-spots if they’re lucky, even those with books. You may labour over it, you may polish and edit and muse. But you don’t do it for bread. I likely made more money selling readings for spare change than I’ve made before or since from my scribbling in a rather lengthy poetry publishing career. But that’s beside the point for most of us: we write because we have to. We write other things for money, or sweep floors or serve coffee or prescribe pills or fix engines. Even Shakespeare knew the burn of the unpaid art- he made his living in the theatre, and thankfully so, but though his sonnets linger centuries later in classrooms and hearts around the world, he wasn’t paid for those.

But frivolous? Yes, I suppose the man was right. It isn’t food and water, and after my pathetic attempts to fund my cross-continent travels reading poetry, I discovered you could do a lot better by scrawling Spare Change for Booze on a cardboard box. For the masses, alcohol is more necessary to daily life than poetry is.  Still, in the beginning of English literature was poetry, and in the end it will remain. From Homer to the Bible to the ubiquitous poetry slams, poetry will never die. There’s something about how bare it lays the human heart. There’s something almost religious in starving for your art. Man cannot live by bread or booze alone.”

Read more:
http://todaystoronto.com/content/view/102/30/

Why  Marshall Matters: on word-wizardry, family values,  and why Eminem and Johnny Cash could have done a duet

“What’s a nice Baptist grrrl (with  dozens of twinkie friends) doing cranking up the volume on obscenity-spewing  gangsta hip-hop?

I’m rapping my ass off, that’s what!

I can’t say I’ve ever identified with Martha Stewart,  though I fancy myself a bit of a whiz in the kitchen. I never saw  use for painting the walls in varying shades of taupe at every season’s  change. But since Our Lady of Napkin Rings busted out of the joint,  seems she’s been shaking it with other middle-aged ladies to  Eminem. And I’ve joined right in, wondering how I failed to  notice up until now that Eminem is the bomb. Not only is he kind  of hot, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say he’s  a man of family values, a master wordsmith, and a storyteller in  the tradition of Johnny Cash.”

Read more:
http://www.ideafactorymagazine.net/xFeb07/art6.html

The Surprising Art of Bill Bateman
“Bill Bateman’s art work reminds me of graffiti and of Joan Miro, so I was surprised to learn that he spent fifteen years in office space planning, and that his prolific expanse of works are inspired by boring sales meetings.

“I first became aware of these things during company meetings,” he confesses. “I’d just be phasing out, and drawing doodles in my notebook. I would draw a line and see what came out of it. It was nervous doodling.”

Read more:
http://www.batemandesign.com/the_idea_museum.htm

In Geez’s Name, Amen
“For Christmas last year I got Dad a saucy brass belt buckle “Jesus,” a Johnny Cash CD, and a copy of Geez Magazine. My dad’s got a pretty wacky sense of humour but I could tell he was uncomfortable with the belt buckle. I’d looked far and wide for the Christian fish symbol but when I found the garishly tacky alternate I knew I was probably going too far. Dad frowned and said that Jesus was more than a belt buckle. I knew he felt it was something worn too close to netherland for comfort, but I told him it was a unique opportunity to witness for the Lord. I believe God has a sense of humour, too, and mine is one gift he gave me. . .”

Read more:
http://www.geezmagazine.org/article/in-geezs-name-amen

A Wintry Night with Julie Ann Bertram
"These narratives echo with mythologies and universal archetypes, reaching into the crevices of consciousness. Here Bertram inhales the black smoke of human toxicity and then holds it up to the light."

Read more:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/jabertram

Review of Tom Harpur’s Finding the Still Point
“But one Christmas service, doodling my financial stresses into my daytimer, I looked up sharply because I heard the word heretic.  And much to my disdain, the good reverend was referring to one of the few Christian writers I find to possess reason and intelligent prose.  Tom Harpur, who has been the religion columnist for The Toronto Star for some thirty years, is a brilliant writer on ethics and spirituality.  But the very congregations that have much to learn from his stance as a "thinking Christian" are condemning him.  I suspect that his overly Christ-like attitude of tolerance and love toward such human issues as homosexuality and addictions might rile up a few protesters.  But Tom is such a gentle and strong writer with a  solid Biblical and social perspective, a refreshing blend, that I was surprised.”

Read more:
http://www.tomharpur.com/books/books_findingthestillpoint.asp

Shift: Positions

Online version of an essay that appeared in an anthology of the Ontario College of Art and Design, co-authored with outstanding visionary Gonzalo Cardenas…the intro was by Ed Burtynsky. Need I say more? “Stuff — oh, glorious stuff. The world we live in screams stuff from every nook and cranny. Billboards, glossy magazines, gargantuan aisles of every mall brim with stuff. Gadgets and gizmos, junk and paraphernalia — our reality is a sea of widgets and contraptions, devices and doohickeys, gimmicks and gear. Our stuff tells our story: the stories of our cultures and the tales of our unique, individual histories and identities. What we do with our stuff, at home and as a society, tells even more.”

I'm so lucky to get to work with the endlessly talented Gonzalo Cardenas frequently, on a vast variety of creative projects. Here he is as a model, showing off his own designs.

Read more: http://ocadstudentpress.ca/index.php?/project/i-heart/

But we're not always working!

Science with The Simpsons: Dr. Paul Halpern and his Bright Idea
“Physics, math equations, chemistry- do I have everybody’s attention? Thought so! Some big ideas are just too, well, big. And those are the ideas that many of us just aren’t going to worry our pretty little heads over.

After all, what’s really important- Brangelina news, or stuff about fissile material? Shoe shopping, or whether the universe is a dodecahedron shape?

Truth is, I’m very interested in science and how things work. Nuclear war, nutrition, global warming, and methamphetamine are just a few relevant issues to our generation, all in today’s news. And I might like to learn more about these things but grow bored of the jargon and the math. If only there were an interesting way for someone to show me the ropes. Because otherwise, all the homework I’m doing this week is clearing my Sunday night schedule for the new Simpsons episode.”

Read more:
http://www.stylerepublicmagazine.com/sciencesimpsons.html

Vince Pincente (Donnarama!) drew this Simpsons-esque caricature of my early arts cooperative, The Idea Museum: left to right - Sal Taglib, me, Gonzalo Cardenas.

Idea Factory: an Exquisite Wheneverly
The follow-up e-zine to Idea Museum was  short-lived  but special era.
http://ideafactorymagazine.net

He’s So Unusual: Donnarama’s World
“Celebrity sure beats telemarketing and retail,” says Donnarama. “I woke up one day and found I was a cult on You Tube.”

Read more:
http://thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/hes-so-unusual-donnaramas-world/

Calling All Angels: a Kindasorta Fairy Tale
“Yep, just another day in paradise. Free to be you and me. I love Canada for being a place where I am free to enjoy my friends and family of all stripes. But it wasn’t that long ago that I had no idea where so much of my freedom comes from. Because of a tireless hero named the Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes, senior pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, my beloved J and G could stand at the altar. Because Brent Hawkes is brave and fearless, Canada is leading the world in many human rights affairs. I’m more guilty than anyone else on Church Street in complaining about just about everything, but Brent’s work puts things into perspective pretty quickly: gays in other parts of the world are regularly jailed, tortured, or killed. A lot of Church Street won’t set foot in church, and though you are invited, friends, you don’t have to feel the spirit to be a part of Brent’s fuzzy glow. We are free to a large extent because of his work.”

Read more:
http://thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/calling-all-angels-a-kindasorta-fairy-tale/

There is Nothing New Under the Sun: Britney, Babylon, and the Modern World
“Like everyone else on the planet, my addiction to celebrity addictions has reached a crescendo. It’s all consuming. Picture a group of four civilized thirtysomethings gathered in the big city for a night of gourmet Thai food and a good catch-up. Two girls, two guys: could be unused Will and Grace footage. Except the hairdresser is leaning intently over a tabloid that features a close up of Michael Jackson’s latest facial bandages. The restaurant manager reaches for Ebony- it’s got the MJ makeover pics, and we decide that’s probably as good as Mikey’s ever gonna look. The actress is circling all the known addicts in Life and Style with a purple Sharpie. The writer muses out loud that even squeaky-clean Nicole K’s husband is an addict. None of that, of course, is anywhere near as important as the story of the century- the public downward spiral of Brit-Brit Spears. This week’s latest chapter has us on the edge of our seats: did Brit’s mom really sleep with K-Fed and the new sinister-looking Arab hottie? Cause if it’s true, it would explain just about every damn thing that’s wrong with that poor girl.
Sure, I’ve been worried about my escalating compulsion to watch the latest breaking stories of Hollywood’s filthy fallouts on late night TV. Worse is the guilty knowledge that even the cheapest glossy rag is a waste of my hard-earned money. But I’ve already given up drugs and sugar, so I cut myself some slack- so long as I am still stopping by Book City for fresh Canadian poetry volumes, Discover Magazine, and cookbooks, so long as I am completing my non-celeb writing assignments, so long as I am eating and sleeping and taking regular baths and changing the kitty litter…”

Read more:
http://thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/there-is-nothing-new-under-the-sun-britney-babylon-and-the-modern-world/

Things Fall Apart

“Cheers Tavern. Most of you jump right into a sitcom, but for locals of East York, Toronto, Cheers is their handy Moe’s Tavern on the Danforth. Unless you were there, and maybe even if you were, you wouldn’t know there was anything particularly special about it. It was a vast and yawning space, eerily vacant everywhere save the bar, where Joe served up the sauce to a small handful of faithful alcoholics.”

Joe, of Cheer's Tavern, with Zoe Nickerson in good times - Zoe and her Pillow Fight League shared the stage that night.

Read more:
http://thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/things-fall-apart/

The Gift of Addiction
“Those who have spent time “in the rooms” may be excruciatingly familiar with the torment of addiction. For individuals who have finally stepped into circle, the party is long over. They know about jails, institutions, and death. They know about the mind games drugs can play, the struggles, the health problems, the insurmountable debt, and the toll in their personal relationships. They know persecution from work, family, and society. They know how hard it is to change a losing game- keep coming back, the circle members chirp. And we do. We keep coming back, and often, we keep going back out.

How we all love to make jokes about Lindsay Lohan’s cracked out paparazzi photos and failed attempts at rehab, Britney’s breakdowns, and unfortunate friends who have never managed strength enough to overcome their addictions. Inside, we toss around a range of theories to see where we fit in. When does social drinking or prescribed medicating or the natural inclination to experiment and escape become circle-worthy? The lines where our life begins to tear apart at the seams are blurry. When did a good time turn bad? Is it weakness? Is it disease? Is it spiritual hunger? Is it selfishness?”

Read more:
http://thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/the-gift-of-addiction/

Feud of the Gods
“I missed what is now old news: Moby’s declaration of love to Eminem, after years of feuding between them over whether or not Moby’s music should be called “techno.” Seems the yappy rapper impressed the lily-livered sage with his anti-Bush rhetoric. I’ve been a fan of Moby’s music for a long time, but spent 2007 hopping around to Eminem and dreaming up ways that we could get together. Eminem used to offend me, too, and now I just can’t get enough of his dynamite. I think Moby is catching on, too, as he ages. Some gods are more theatrical, some more solemn. Each has his place. Britney and Kevin? Elton and Diana? Madonna and the rest? It’s just the feud of the gods.”

Read more:
http://thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/feud-of-the-gods/

Take the Greensons Bowling, Take them Bowling
(or, the Art and Times of Iaian Greenson)

“There was no particular moment that Iaian  decided to become an artist. “I still haven’t decided,” he says.  He was intent on the writer’s life of lonely alcoholic  brilliance and brooding cantankerousness of idols like Hemingway  or Hunter S. (“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by  the late Dr Hunter S. Thompson, God bless him, is really the best book ever written. I used to read it at least once  a year. If there is a better line than, 'the room looked like  the site of some disastrous zoological experiment involving whiskey  and gorillas, bad evidence of that afternoon when my attorney  ran amok with the coconut hammer… then I still haven't  read it.”)

What an incredible honour that the world's most awesome artist, Iaian Greenson, was inspired to paint this portrait of me, "naked!"

But that was then and this is now. “My God….I can  remember the first time I saw Guernica…it blew the top  of my head off,” Iaian says. Thousands of canvases later,  giant canvases with cartoony depictions of trivial pop culture  miscellany and television heroes, Iaian gives Warhol’s  legacy some substance. (The Greenson timeline goes something  like this: “I was born in 1972. In 1975 my mother brought  my brother and I to the theatre to watch Jaws. Christmas of 78,  again in Madrid where I first discovered Speed Racer and James  Bond movies. In 1979 I watched the B52s on Saturday Night Live  with my dad and brother in a hotel room on vacation.

The Artist and the Writer - at our best friend's wedding (with handsome Sal in background!)

In 1981  I discovered New Wave and music videos. David Bowie and Andy  Warhol followed. I literally could go on and on and on. All of  it, to me, is like my family tree. I am a child of the 1970s  and 1980s…so I happily nursed at television's gorgeous  teats.”)”

Read more:
http://ideafactorymagazine.net/2A.html

Poor Little Rich Girl Danielle Steel
“The girl lurks furtively outside the building, looking first one way and then another. Satisfied that the coast is clear, she opens the side door and goes in. Within a few seconds, she emerges back into the daylight, clutching something against her, trying to look inconspicuous as she boots across during a lull in traffic. She hurries down a side street and disappears.
Well, sure, that might have been a scene from either Nine and a Half Weeks or from Traffic, but it was just me, stealing in and out of the library as fast as I could. I didn’t want to be caught dead with this book. I’m not averse to fluffy reading and own up to a sick addiction to OK and Us Weekly. But this? I’ve only ever read a small handful of romance genre novels, and that was when my 14-year old sister and I came across a gold mine of five-cent harlequins at a yard sale in North Bay about 25 years ago. This one is at least a hardcover, giving it a slight distinction. But it’s covered in flowers with a necessarily-posed heroine, head back, hand against his rippling chest, eyes closed, hair cascading into a tumultuous heaven of roses and butterflies. It’s just so not me.

From my lengthy career in various facets of bookselling, I know that the romance genre is the biggest-selling genre of all. Despite my disdain for formulaic drivel, we might all give a nod to this part of the industry, which basically earns the bread that lets obscure poets and dead professors give their two cents worth. It’s my job as a writer to be amusing, and to give my ‘professional opinion” on literature, but my back went up every time some guy rolled his eyes and told his wife to save her money and her mind from ‘that crap.’

I wasn’t allowed, of course, to say it then, but I’ll say it now, to every man who hoisted up his armload of history and science tomes and frowned as he fetched his wife from the bodice ripper aisle. Not only is your wife’s particular blend of un-fillfillment and loneliness funding these intellectual borefests you’re taking home, but she’s not the one blowing the paycheque on porn. You can’t criticize a woman for her banal but literate fantasy life when you are buying porn, the biggest industry on earth. I don’t want to ever hear again about the academic wasteland of your wife’s reading habits until something without pictures can sustain your attention.”

Read more:
http://thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com/2007/11/15/stranger-than-fiction-poor-little-rich-girl-danielle-steel/

Thomas Moore’s A Life at Work
“Middle age looms astonishingly near for a writer who built a brand on the nickname ‘The Girl.” Though I do not fear the wisdom that they say will make an appearance, few would describe me as mature or settled! I often joke that my youngest brother, now 23, is ‘finally my age.’ And once again, my teacher Thomas Moore can read my every molecule with a clarity I seldom possess.

“Some people get caught up in the Icarus syndrome at one point in their lives; others are perpetually like him- full of desire, somewhat reckless, and lost in their ideals. Often, too, they crash into a depression or some failed project and become disillusioned. Then they oscillate between grand ideas and failed experiments,” Moore writes in his new book, A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Born to Do.”

Read more:
http://literaryaddict.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/reading-thomas-moore’s-a-life-at-work/

Home Alone: thoughts on the writing life
“February has just slipped out from under me, and I know sooner or later I will have to leave the house.

Sure, I’m anticipating long and curious city walks in spring’s fuzzy glow. I’m dying for midnight coffees near Bloor and Brunswick, where the conversations of the assorted revelers nearby fill my notebooks. I want to be a lady who lunches, to go someplace with Elle and our girls, to pound them back and show off our vintage clutches. Oh, yes. I can feel the thaw. I will even go dancing, I’ll wear red lipstick and a smudged mole. I could definitely enjoy something with the banjo tonight, or something with gin.”

Read more:
http://literaryaddict.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/home-alone-thoughts-on-the-writing-life/

Live Plucky: Adventuring With Nancy Drew
“Once upon a time, there was a small girl with a big stack of books. She was barely five years old, but had torn through a zillion Golden Books and Disney fairy tales and was stuck at the cottage with nothing to read. Her folks took her to a used bookstore in Parry Sound, where she picked out about 30 yellow-spined Nancy Drew mystery stories. Within days, she was prowling the swamps behind the cottage for clues, making believe that nearby ghost town ruins were castles. With a notebook in one hand, and a flashlight in the other, the girl made relentless notes on the few characters that populated the lake and woods where she was staying. That little girl grew up to be a writer.

Nancy’s independent spirit and inquiring mind were early influences on my imagination. Her enthusiasm at solving puzzles in her world let me reason that I could do the same. Though I was not jet setting with my lawyer dad to exotic places, creeping up secret stairwells and hunting for treasures in gypsy camps, I lived as if I were. The world opened up for me when I began to investigate it. Nancy led the way into the great unknown and assured me that the world belonged to me. I learned early from her escapades that girls could be strong, smart and pretty.”

Read more:
http://literaryaddict.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/live-plucky-adventuring-with-nancy-drew/

Here I am with the legendary writer Crad Kilodney, at a mining stocks convention, where I got a lot of free pens!

Crad Kilodney for President
“Kilodney’s public mythos is something of a cantankerous, angry, half-starved writer, and the titles of his self-published works only further that reputation. Works like Lightning Struck my Dick, Bang Heads Here, Suffering Bastards, and Terminal Ward make Bukowski and Hemingway look like cheerleaders.”

Read more:
http://literaryaddict.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/crad-kilodney-for-president/

Not Another Damn Requiem ‘That’s just the thing, then, with sorrow, and living with it like it’s an old friend. And it is. The sadness can surface at any time, crumpling you momentarily. It doesn’t matter if it was an inconvenient moment for a shot in the heart: the blows come when you least expect them, and sometimes when you do.”
	This was Bobby's favourite photograph. In addition to the obvious aesthetics of a gorgeous picture, he loved the serenity of it.

Read more:
http://thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/further-lamentations/

Today's Toronto

Dozens of my articles, mainly lit stuff and restaurant reviews, are available on Today's Toronto.

Read more:
http://todaystoronto.com/content/section/4/30/