Canada Night and Fringe

I'm a little late here, but if you remember Description 41, you'll know the Toronto Fringe Festival is a very cool thing with bits of theatre hanging out all over the place. Well, we're in the middle of this year's edition around here (it goes to the 13th), and if you're in town, you'd do well to check it out. Take a look through the official site about all sorts of partyin'-type events going on, and Eye Weekly's Fringe section for up-to-the-minute reviews of the shows.

We're also done with this whole Canada Day / Independence Day week. I've never done a show about any of that, though there will be something in the future about what I did on the 4th of July. Canada Day, of course, is much more important to me, and that night, I went down to Harbourfront Centre (the site of Description 50) to enjoy the festivities, including a free concert by Martha Wainwright and Basia Bulat. For those of you who haven't been to any Canada Day anything, here's video of what some of that looked like as day turned to night.

Canada Night '08 on Vimeo.

Description 54 - Standing In the Way of Connection

It's new media vs. old media, and only one makes me break out into song. I give an idea of how podcasting helped change my life and why commercial radio is the way it is, featuring a mashup, some power tools and not enough water.

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Associated links
Podcasters Across Borders
Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche
Danny Michel and Wallace Hartley
Canadian Podcast Buffet
The QN Podcast
Talking Stick Podcast
Wooby Communications
chrisbrogan.com
Christopher S. Penn's Awaken Your Superhero
In Over Your Head (Julien Smith)
Tod F-ing Maffin :-)
Terry Fallis' The Best Laid Plans
Nora Young: CBC's Spark and The Sniffer
Dan Misener: Jim Dupree: Enthusiast and Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids
A plus D
The CRTC and the transcript of my day at the Edmonton hearing (my group was second)
Painting With Ella videos on myspace

Tech note: because this episode is so long, it's at 96kbps to save on file size.

You can find Danny Michel doing the second verse of "Hartley" by going to his music page, scrolling down to his 1999 album Fibsville, playing the streamed sample and listening for the third clip in the montage. Yep, dude makes it easy, don't he?

Of course, no kind of media is all good or bad. Podcasting is not all a warm and fuzzy diary room, nor should it be, and commercial radio is not inherently evil. Even the prevailing mindsets involved have their myriad variations. The people I worked with for the CRTC hearings were wonderful, the commissioners themselves were understanding and patient (I wouldn't give my worst enemy their job of having to listen to people like us for days and days at a time) and mean well. Also while I find the attitude behind CCD programs sometimes patronizing, I also know artists/bands who have been really helped by them (The Ambers, for one - money from Rawlco funded the recording of the song I'll be playing in the next episode). It's just Joe Average and grassroots podcasters don't know well the motivations of "old media" and radio/government folks don't quite get what's behind much of this "amateur" podcasting thing.

There wasn't much time to mention Bruce Murray, known as being the force of The Zedcast, and the kind of guy who would walk up to me on the boat cruise last year, start chatting with me, and introduce me to some great people to give me some social momentum. This year, he had to stay in Nova Scotia, and was greatly missed at PAB. Yet he made his presence known in a very funny video he sent, that was played during the opening of the conference. It was a riff on podfading (when podcasters stop podcasting so much, which Bruce can be accused of) which included some silly video footage he'd shot during past PABs...including of me. This of course I didn't see coming. So along with everything else, I'm known as the girl who flipped her hair and said she was feeling "conferency". I gave him hell in my special way over the phone later, but certainly it could've been more embarrassing (he's probably working on ways to make it so in the future), and considering his past work, it was an honour to be included.

And no, I'm not being diplomatic about that.

(Update: June 25 - okay, now Bruce has that video on you tube. Will his wonderfulness ever cease? Could it? Please? Anytime now?)

The Description PAB Teaser

Part of me going to Podcasters Across Borders this weekend has involved sending in a "PAB Teaser," or a 2-3 minute sample of the show. So I went through all 53 episodes of this podcast, took clips from all of them, then edited everything down into under 3 minutes. The process was a bit of a trip, and I hope listeners get a kick out of the result.

Here's the Description PAB Teaser!

As for folks who are actually going to PAB and haven't been here before, it doesn't look like I'm getting Description 54 done in time, so scroll on down past Gooch and the Doctor (which you can thrill to later) to the latest episode, Description 53.

Gooch & The Doctor!

It's my last day in Edmonton, where I've recorded enough for two episodes, one of which I'm hoping to pull off before going to Podcasters Across Borders in a couple weeks. But in the meantime...if somehow you remember Description 07, you'll know I was a small part of a certain culture headquartered at 6 Ross. During that halcyon time, there were some short films made by and featuring some of the residents of that house, and another of them is on youtube, hopefully with more to come.

To review, Frank (The Gooch) and Craig (The Doctor) are friends from way back in Sault Ste. Marie. I got to know them when they were in Memory Bank, whose music I played here a couple times. They've gone on to other things, but they're still Gooch and The Doctor, and I'm privileged to know them.

As for their sitcom personae, The Gooch is somewhat similar in real life to Frank, and The Doctor is a little bit like Craig when it's about 2am and he's just finished a mickey of Bacardi. His iconic haircut is no more, and there's no way he would've gotten that far moving that couch by himself.

As for whether they can communicate with each other telepathically? The world may never know...

Description 53 - On the Hill

I'm in the seat of Canadian power (probably), reading a pamphlet, admiring statues of people holding documents, reducing an important monument to a Renaissance Faire hat and saying "awesome" too much. But the kitty-cats make up for it.

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Associated links
Ottawa Tourism
National Arts Centre
A Treasure to Explore: Parliament Hill, including history, the "Hill Cam" and a Flash Virtual Tour
The statues discussed: John Diefenbaker, Queen Victoria, Lester Pearson, Baldwin and Lafontaine, Sir John A. MacDonald
Lester B. Pearson @The Greatest Canadian
Canadian Parliamentary Cats @Wikipedia
Canadian Museum of Civilization
The Women Are Persons! Monument

The song I "sing" at the beginning is a mocking Rhapsody In Blue. In one of the sections I had to cut for time, I talked about a kiosk with ads of upcoming events at the NAC, and one was for Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the NACO in a program which includes George Gershwin's Piano Concerto In F. I was relieved they were doing that instead of that other Gershwin piece that has become such a cliché, then demonstrated what a cliché it's become.

To give you an idea of the multimedia brilliance of the NAC, on that page I've linked for the event, there's a link to an episode of their "Explore the Symphony" podcast, which discusses another composer featured in that night's program, Johannes Brahms. I just had to stop writing this post to listen to it. The NAC has been an important part of the Canadian podcasting community (a word used almost as much as Rhapsody In Blue has been played) for a few years now - in fact, I remember them doing video blogs before the concept was even invented, as early as 2000 (my friend Gavin worked on them). I highly recommend you explore all of their podcasts in English and French. There's even a cooking podcast, for heaven's sake! Other great podcasts produced in Ottawa include Fear and Loathing In Ottawa, The Gaelic Hour, and pretty much everything done by Mark Blevis.

Something else I cut was any mention of the big event going on in town at the time: the Canadian Tulip Festival (though there is the odd mention of tulips). Basically, through most of May every year, there are tulips just about everywhere they can be planted in Ottawa and Gatineau, with the biggest display at Major's Hill Park, sort of across from the U.S. Embassy. It is a pretty spectacular thing if you're so enclined.

Btw, I remember the location of that park in relation to the embassy not because of my background, but because of a time I attended the other big event that happens in Ottawa, Bluesfest in July. A few years ago, I went to see Danny Michel play in Major's Hill Park. During the set, Danny noticed an inexplicable echo. Trying to figure it out, he started playing short bursts to bounce back at him. The echo was a result of the sound going across the park to the tremendous wall of glass on the modern, imposing embassy. Once that was determined, he played a couple more echo games with us, then noted how symbolic it was that no matter what we tried to say to the Americans, it would just get bounced back at us.

One of the good guys in radio

I just saw on CP24 that Marc Chambers passed away today, so I did some googling for confirmation, and unfortunately found some.

When I started working at CJOJ in Belleville in 1995, I heard rumblings that this guy who'd been big at CHUM was going to ride shotgun with our morning man for ratings period. This of course intimidated me since 1) most things do, and 2) CHUM (AM and FM) was kind of an institution to me, and anyone who did well there was automatically a radio hero, even if I hadn't heard him/her. But the only thing really intimidating about Marc Chambers was his voice: a booming, but smooth piece of work that's the sort of thing you think of when you think of real radio. Not surprising, then, that he was one of the most used "image" voices in the business, the guy who declares the name of your station or network. The one he may have been best known for was The Weather Network.

I've probably given the impression that commercial radio people are a weird bunch, and a lot of them have a distinct kind of neurotic desperation to them that can make them assholes. (I'm guessing I could be put in that group at times in my life.) Marc was not one of those guys. He'd do his thing, never being too out-there or cloying, and be done with it, joking around off-mic and just being cool. He had a deep love for radio that emanated from him; he'd been around the block enough times that it could have worn him down, but I sensed no bitterness or cynicism from him. He was confident in his talent, but quietly so, and he was supportive of everyone around him, including me.

I only worked with him for a few months, and maybe talked to him a time or two after that. So for all I know, he actually could've been an asshole. ;-) But I observed the work he did on the mic - which he earned by being a hustling freelancer - and also his work providing support in the business, doing things like his columns in Broadcast Dialogue magazine. All that good stuff still showed through. He was one of those people I'd kept telling myself I should get back in touch with, but never did. And here we are.

But I wanted to let you know that, to me, Marc Chambers was one of the good guys in radio, and that there actually are some. To learn more, 1050CHUM has a great tribute here.

Description 52 - Covered By OHIP

Breasts! Refrigerator noise! Gowns with three sleeves! Baskets of knitting! And me actually talking to people! It's all to celebrate our fine health-care system just slightly less than Michael Moore has. Also with great music by Colleen Brown...and by the pesky neighbours downstairs.

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Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
"The Birth of Medicare" @ CBC Digital Archives
Health Care in Canada @ wikipedia
St. Michael's Hospital
CIBC Breast Clinic
Rethink Breast Cancer
Colleen Brown: official site, myspace, New Music Canada, CD Baby and... publicbroadcasting.ca!
Second Cup
CP24 (They don't have it on a stream anymore? Crap!)
Stand Up Tragedy X, totally explaining the TTC Strike (Thanks, Todd!)

Until this experience, I'd never been in a waiting room where so many people were talking with each other. To me, waiting rooms have always been places where you come in, (present your health card if you live here), sit down and read something, or in my case listen to an iPod. But when I donned the three-sleeved pink gown and entered, about four other women in similar gowns were chatting. Three of them had finished and were waiting for the okay to go, and they were trying to comfort the other woman, who was waiting to get her mammogram and was very nervous about it, having had a bad experience last time. My rationale was 1) my mom said it's never been too bad, and 2) compared to other exams we have to endure, how bad can it be? Another said it was nothing compared to being in a full MRI machine closed in around you like a smooth white coffin for a half hour. Totally soothing, weren't we? But if nothing else, we emphasized that however bad it would be, stressing about it would make it much worse. True enough. So that nervous woman is the one I'm talking to in the episode after we'd both done our thing; she'd survived, and was a bit calmer.

The waiting room chat was an odd thing for me not just because of the waiting room, but in being some sort of female bonding experience. As you might have figured, I've never been part of many dishy, soul-baring little coffee klatches you might find on any number of tv shows; or identified myself with a kind of sisterhood. But there we were - people with the same pink gowns and the same body parts being tested for cancer. No avoiding that. So somehow talking happened, and it was okay.

Now that I think of it, that idea of strangers connected by a medical procedure reminds me of a more trivial but stranger circumstance. I briefly mention in the episode that I had (and still do to an extent) scoliosis, or curvature of the spine. I put it down to slumping and always cocking the same hip when I stood. I was diagnosed when most kids are, at about 12 or 13 years old, and it mainly involved skipping school once every couple months to get x-rays (for which I waited all day at my local hospital) and then an examination by some doctor who'd come in from Cleveland to check a bunch of us to see if we were getting worse. When he found I was, I was assigned exercises and later a brace (not for the neck, but more like a big thick corset) for a lovely couple years in 8th and 9th grade. Eventually, things solidified, they didn't have to run a steel bar up my back, and I went on with my life with the odd back complaint. Hardly a rare story...and by the way, Dad had excellent health insurance from his work up until a few years after his retirement.

Shortly after Kurt Cobain died, I read a report of his myriad ailments both natural and man-made. Among his natural ones: scoliosis. Suddenly, I could picture the poor kid going through those screenings, the x-rays, the exams, one of the few boys. Still, I concluded that for all the suffering Kurt Cobain endured, I was very thankful scoliosis was the only one to which I could truly relate.

Jane's Walk, and what happens when I talk too much

A couple notes here before I eventually get to the next episode (first there's a Movies For the Blind episode, then taxes as our deadline is the end of April, then I swear I'm all yours!).

Remember last year when I did a show about "Jane's Walk", following Angus Skene around while he said lots of interesting things about my neighbourhood of The Annex? If not, that's what links are for. But regardless, Jane's Walk is back, with a bunch of neat guided walks on the weekend of May 3rd. Angus will be doing his thing again around here, so if you want to finally catch everything he says and watch him do his wicked chalk drawings, you can. I'll be taking my iRiver somewhere yet to be determined, and hopefully that will make for another show. But don't wait for me if you're in the city - go pick out a great walk for yourself!

Also, this Jane's Walk thing isn't even limited to Toronto! (Hard to believe, I know, that there are things not limited to Toronto...) There will be Jane's Walks in Halifax, Charlottetown, Ottawa, Guelph (I personally love that there's one in Guelph, because it's the smallest town among these and it's so fun to say), Winnipeg and Vancouver. And for some reason, there's one in Salt Lake City, Utah, bless their hearts. So get a little exercise and look at your own city from a new (or old) perspective. I guess you can do that without a Jane's Walk, really, so no excuses for anyone.

In other news, I went to a Toronto Podcasters' Meetup a couple weeks ago, had a pint and talked too much with terrific people. Since it was a podcasters' meetup, some of my talking too much has gotten on some podcasts. First, some of the blathering made it to the Audio Dessert portion of episode 99 of the Canadian Podcast Buffet, then a huge slab of it was on episode 137 of Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters (and there might be more). So if for some reason you actually want to hear me talk too much and too loud about podcasting, zoom in on those lovely shows.

(Note: the rest of this post might be self-indulgent crap bloggers do.)

One of the several funny things about that meetup started a series of events where I've learned (again) how perception and momentum can trump truth. I was talking with one of the newbies who had really energized the meetup, when I heard out of the corner of my ear a word I hadn't heard before: "communitize". I turned to Katherine Matthews, of the fine podcasts Purl Diving and Cinéfolle, who despite being sick with some cold-like thing, came from Guelph (see? fun to say!) with her partner Rob to be her intelligent and charming self.

"Did you just use the word...COMMUNITIZE?" I said in the most dramatically amazed fashion possible.

She had, and somehow this blew. my. mind. I told her that was absolutely freaking brilliant. And we went on with our lives, though occasionally I would blurt out the word "communitize" like a Doug Henning impersonator with Tourette's. Sometimes I would even include magician-like hand gestures, as if using my special powers to transform someone across the room to suddenly become embued with the light and wonder of comments and camps and forums and groups, skipping tra-la into the street making K17 calls. Hi-lar-ee-uss.

When I got home, I of course twittered about it, and of course included the thought that "communitize" is going to become a beeeg geek word, like "bacn" and "rickroll". I might have said something about it on Facebook too. A couple days later, the very esteemed and awesome (which has nothing to do with him buying me a beer at the previous Toronto meetup) Mark Blevis of said CPB, Just One More Book and Electric Sky (and other things - I ain't got all day) twittered something about me saying "communitize" and how wicked-cool that word was. I replied that, yeah, wicked-cool, but it's not my word - I got it from Katherine. Then episode 100 of CPB comes out, and Mark says the meetup host John Meadows (of On the Log) said I'd coined that term, then Mark couched it by saying he has since learned I hadn't (yes, like from me), but "I will always remember her when I think of this word".

Sigh. Alrighty.

More twittering, blog-commenting and Facebook wall-writing and statusing would follow. John graciously gave his mea culpas (I believe he had been entranced by the Doug Henning/Tourette's thing, and frankly, who could blame him?), others gave their clarifications, Mark actually found some origin for the word a couple years prior, scoobily doobily doo. So at least in writing terms, it's straight that Katherine brought up the word...well, you know...at the Toronto meetup.

If this story sounds a bit silly, excellent. As the great Newfoundland seperatist Jerry Boyle would say, you're my kind of people.

Does that make you a community? It's not my job to say. It's not anyone's job to say. Unless someone's job is (wait for it...) communitization. In which case, that person better stay away from me until he can grow a super mustache, wear a jumpsuit and learn to levitate.

Description 51 - Beyond the Blue Horizon

I wander through Vancouver, land of "verdant-ness" and floatplanes, and consider the arrogance of Canada's biggest cities - like my own. Includes music by Allison Crowe, moss on the 37th floor, a silver shack on stilts and the inevitable connection between Stargate and Creative Anachronism.

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Associated links
Why I was in Vancouver
Tourism Vancouver
Vancouver-Alaska cruises
Grouse Mountain
Vancouver 2010
Triple A radio
Allison Crowe: official, myspace, maplemusic, and at publicbroadcasting.ca!
Blue Horizon Hotel
Blenz Coffee
Great Lakes Medieval Faire
Some Vancouver locations for Stargate SG-1
Gateworld!
Coal Harbour
Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre

Cut an awful lot out of this one, particularly more details on the CRTC stuff and the mysteries of trying to start a commercial radio station in this country (which may help explain why some of us are podcasting), but I suspect there'll be other chances to discuss that. Then there are other wonders of Vancouver cut out like DaVinci's Inquest, The Beachcombers, Capers Community Markets and the best strip clubs in the world.

Then there was the preponderance of Dutch restaurants in Vancouver. The city is known for its great Indian, Chinese and Japanese cuisine (especially sushi, imho). But Dutch??? In my wanderings, I'd discovered there's this chain of restaurants called De Dutch Pannekoek House, which seems to be what Chez Cora is in Quebec - a happy, homey place specializing in breakfast, brunch and lunch. It turns out a Pannekoek is a big freaking pancake you often serve with other food on top, although De Dutch does say on their website "we're not just Pannekoeken!" (well, thank God for that!). If I had walked past one of these places while they were open (almost all of them close after lunch), I swear I would have taken the iRiver in there and really dug in. But I had to content myself with gawking in windows and posted menus, still marvelling, "Dutch? Why Dutch?"

It turns out 50 years ago, some Dutch guy wanted out of the Dutch Army. So he emigrated to Vancouver. After working odd jobs and recovering from a car accident, he found work in the restaurant business, eventually got known for a place called "The Frying Dutchman" then took a shot at this Pannekoek thing in 1975. Now they have 17 of these things in the area.

So there you go. One immigrant comes to Canada and gives a city something you're sure as heck not going to find in Toronto or Montreal. At least not yet.

Description 50 - Skating

I lace 'em up for one of Canada's great pastimes (besides complaining, maybe), which turns out to be nothing like riding a bike. Includes lots of non-podsafe music in the background, spilled chocolate milk, wobbly ankles...and yes, a zamboni.

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Associated links
The Natrel Rink @ Harbourfront Centre
QuickTime VR panorama of the Harbourfront Stage next door
Other outdoor rinks in Toronto
Great Canadian male figure skaters: Toller Cranston, Brian Orser, Kurt Browning on The Hour, Elvis Stojko, Jeff Buttle, Emanuel Sandhu and new champion Patrick Chan
Play It Again Sports
Learn to skate with wikiHow
(I was supposed to push off with the other foot! Damn!)

I would've gotten this episode done a couple weeks ago, but instead I went on a pretty crazy trip which you'll hear more about in the next episode. Yes, it'll actually be here in less than a month. I just got back last night, so I'm still zoned enough to not have a heck of a lot more to say about this skating stuff. However...

In researching links for this, I went looking for stuff about Kurt Browning, and fell down a youtube rabbit hole. Seriously, I loved this guy, and probably still do now he's lost most of his hair, is long married with kids, is transitioning from the ice to the broadcast booth, and could walk past me on the street at any moment.

While I did find the program that got me to fall in love with him, "Johnny Guitar" for the 1991 World Championships Gala (see, I told you I used to be a geek with this stuff!), a better primer for anyone who has forgotten or has no idea what the deal is with Kurt Browning would be this clip from a "Skate the Nation" special in '95, where he eventually does his Lyle Lovett thing while hooked up to a microphone. Enjoy, as I step back away from that rabbit hole...