Opeth, Moonspell and DevilDriver, January 23 at the Commodore Ballroom
I was really looking forward to this show. Opeth have been my favourite currently active metal band for about eight years now, and finally they were coming to town. Circumstances intervened, however, and I didn't quite get the show I was expecting.

Devildriver's frontman had an American flag hanging out his back pocket and played up the working class hero angle with the crowd. I didn't hear any songs, though.

The singer for Portugal's Moonspell had a really peculiar accent and looked like a gangly cross between Nick Cave and Hugo Weaving. He faced down a patch of raised middle fingers sprouting from the pit and helped his band gradually win over a fair portion of the crowd. Their midtempo goth metal isn't really my bag anymore (bands like Tiamat and Samael released classic albums in this style, back when we hadn't heard it all before), but their songs came across pretty well. "Opium" is a pretty decent stomper.

With drummer Martin Lopez having flown home, apparently panic stricken over the thought of touring in the land of donut shops and Don Cherry (or more specifically, the land of Ralph Klein and Gordon Campbell), Opeth were in a tight spot. Their drum roadie was behind the kit when they began the concert with a set from Damnation (opening with “In My Time of Need”) and a Deep Purple cover—“Soldier of Fortune” (from the Coverdale-era Stormbringer). Singer/guitarist Mikael Akerfeldt explained the situation well, and the crowd was very forgiving. He joked at one point that they had tried to teach “Black Rose Immortal” (the Morningrise album's nearly 20-minute centrepiece) to the drum tech, but they only had half an hour to do it. Despite the focus on the exclusively mellow new album, I was more than happy. Damnation contained some of the finest songs I heard last year.

After a set of “softies,” as Mikael described them, transplanted local boy Gene Hoglan came on and they did two more songs: “The Drapery Falls” and “Demon of the Fall.” This is what the crowd had been waiting for—some proper Opeth epics. Everyone was well into it, and Mikael's first death vox got a huge cheer. Mikael commented that Gene had nailed the first song in one take during soundcheck; he got the other song in two takes. Come showtime, Gene was bang on.

And that was it—half a set from 3/4 of the band. They appeared as upset about the situation as the crowd was, but overall the gig had a good vibe, truncated as it was. They held an autograph session at the merch table afterwards, but I didn’t stick around for that. I guess I’ll get a more complete impression of what Opeth can do live when I get my hands on the Lamentations DVD. I finally got to see them in the flesh, though, and that counts for a lot.

Refund, please! Disappointing gig stories: Progressive Ears has a ton of them in the OT Forum. I tried to link directly to the topic, but it kept going all pear-shaped.

This mighty fine thread gets off to a roaring start with a story about Miles Davis executing the exact opposite of a roaring start in '74.

Speaking of things (such as LotR) that occupy the mystical border between prog and metal:
"Santas' [sic] cloaks provide unique 'canvasses,' flawlessly showcasing Mr. Agnew's dramatic wolf art."

We’ve been on a Twin Peaks kick lately, plowing through a bunch of episodes that I taped when it originally aired. Fancylady never watched the show—she was too busy getting a life at the time.

I can imagine a lot of people still holding a grudge against Twin Peaks. I bet people have bitter memories of inane water cooler conversations about who killed Laura Palmer, or of Halloween parties where four people came as the Log Lady. Even I got tired of “damn good coffee!” and other catchphrasery, the same way that I want to clobber anyone who says “yada yada yada” within earshot these days.

But I won’t question the fact that Twin Peaks is/was quality television. It was probably the first time that an American network produced anything that you could compare favourably to Denis Potter’s The Singing Detective or Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom. It did pretty well in the ratings, too, until, like most American shows, it lost its original spark and outstayed its welcome.

Aside from the occasional mullet on display, Twin Peaks hasn’t dated too badly. Because I already know what’s going to happen plot-wise, I’m finding a lot of other things to enjoy about the show.

* The opening credit sequence of automated saw blade sharpening is really soothing and beautiful.

* The relationship between Major Briggs and his son Bobby is both hilarious and touching. It’s easy to chuckle at the Major (who is always in uniform and speaks in a grave tone that never wavers) and his heartfelt efforts to connect emotionally with his son. Yet it’s hard not to feel for him, because he never gives up or shows any irritability in the face of his son’s utter indifference and contempt.

* There was a time when Lara Flynn Boyle looked like a healthy human being.

* Invitation to Love. This is Twin Peaks’ show within a show, a ridiculous soap opera that’s on TV in the background of many scenes. I guess Invitation to Love is Lynch reminding us, not very subtly, that we’re watching a soap opera ourselves. Anyway, I like that Invitation to Love is always on, day or night, and that all the characters, regardless of age and gender, watch it.

* Jerry Horne and his obsession with exotic food.

* My all-time favourite Twin Peaks scene. Near the end of episode 10 we find ourselves at a singalong (or a recording session?) on the floor of the Palmers’ living room. James, Donna and Maddie sit around some 50s-style microphones. James says, “That was really good. Let’s try it again.” They begin singing a simple ballad whose lyrics mainly consist of “Just you and I/Together forever in love.” James plays a hollow-body electric guitar and sings in an unearthly falsetto. As the song progresses, bass and drums join in. All three kids seem entranced by the sounds they’re making. Donna and Maddie, who’ve come to resemble each other during the episode, sing backup. Donna looks at Maddie looking at James, then at James looking at Maddie, then becomes upset and runs off. James gets up to console her and the music stops abruptly, like the tape was cut. As James and Donna kiss, Maddie, alone and perplexed on the floor, has a frightening vision of BOB.

I love this scene for its randomness. Aside from the romantic tension and Maddie’s vision, it doesn’t have anything to do with the plot. None of the characters have shown any musical inclinations before, and what’s the deal with those microphones and James’s voice? I also love it because of the creepy song they sing. I assume that David Lynch wrote it, because the phrasing is similar to his “Heaven (Lady in the Radiator)” song from Eraserhead. The mysterious James song isn’t on the soundtrack album, unfortunately, so the only way to enjoy it is to watch this scene over and over—which I have.

We’re also watching the Ben Stiller Show these days. I only have a 10-minute scrap of it on tape as evidence of its brief lifespan, but fancy got me the whole works on DVD for my birthday. There’s a definite early 90s slant to our entertainment intake right now. Where will it end? I invite you to break down our door and berate us if we start listening to The Spin Doctors.

I had a good birthday week. I'm the last of the family line in Vancouver right now (everyone's flown to New Zealand), but fancy and friends kept me entertained over the weekend. The belter and I saw LoTR RotK on Friday night. Jetbot posted this first, but Lord of the Rings is very metal...and extremely prog, I should add. Hobbits and elves = prog. Orcs and men = metal. All the talk of Minas Morgul in the movie made me want to slap on the namesake album by Summoning, who are probably the most Tolkienesque metal band ever, aside from Isildur's Bane, Amon Amarth, Isengard, Nazgul, Cirith Ungol, Gorgoroth, and (Sil)Marillion.

On Saturday we ate Greek with Mel and Adam (thanks!). It was so good I had to deploy the hollow leg. Back home, there was nothing but figure skating on TV, but I got to see this one skater who'd selected "Dust in the Wind" for her long program. We decided she must have been from Quebec. No artistically timid Anglophone athlete would invite spectators to contemplate their own mortality at a figure skating competition.

Fancylady's been sick for a while, and she finally succumbed to laryngitis later that night. The next morning, her voice approximated Deirdre Barlow's oxygen-starved wheeze. It felt like the Drear herself was next to me on the couch for Sunday morning Corrie. She tried out a quick impression—"Oh, Ken!"—and it was stunning. I asked her to give me a "Tracy luv," but she'd finished channelling Deirdre for the day. Oh, well, if I want Corrie impressions, I can always enjoy my favourite—Glen Campbell as Roy Cropper.

Greetings from Vancouver, where severe winter weather doesn't stop people from wearing yoga pants.

On days like today, I can almost believe that this city won't look completely idiotic when it hosts the Winter Olympics.

“No more groceries—only DVDs.”
This is the new household credo, thanks to a present from the awesomely generous Fraylors. We may go hungry…but we’ll never be starved for entertainment (boom-ching).

I’ve been having concert dreams lately. Last night I dreamt that I went to see Djam Karet at the Pacific Coliseum. About eight people were there, and my friend Smash was a no-show. I’m always alone in concert dreams. I also had a dream about the Deep Purple/Thin Lizzy show coming to the Orpheum this February. I was walking up the aisle trying to find my seat when I came upon a feisty Cloris Leachman, who insulted both my gender and my economic status during our brief exchange. My seat, it turned out, was in the last row and faced the back wall. Concerts bring out the worrier in me.

Fancylady and I will be going to the Purple/Lizzy gig. My concert dream-cycle may be over by then, but fancy will have to face her worst nightmare—witnessing a performance of “The Boys Are Back in Town.”

The tree is upright and decorated, I've seen Mr. Bean with a giant turkey stuck on his head, I've gladly paid $9 for a Terry's Chocolate Orange (the white chocolate variant), and I'm grabbing the g.d. clicker box every time that commercial with John Lennon singing "So this is Christmas" over a montage of starving children comes on. I love this time of year.

The only thing I haven't done is gone shopping with my sister. The tiny doctor is in New Zealand, tumbling down crevasses and setting new lows in personal hygiene while on a mountaineering course. Every year we meet downtown during the peak weekend of consumer insanity to buy things for our parents and finish any other shopping we have left to do. Our secondary mission is to be nice to salespeople—they're the real saints of the season, having to deal with individuals who make themselves miserable over something as inherently frivolous as Christmas shopping.

Oh well, everyone's entitled to a minor Yuletide gripe, as long as they don't take it out on an innocent bystander. Personally, I'm still a little pissed that they shut down the Marks and Spencer on Robson. There was no better place to shop for parents.

The Tangent—The Music that Died Alone (Inside/Out Music)
The liner notes say, “So how would it turn out if four English Nihilists teamed up with three Swedish Aquarians?” Pretty darn well. The Tangent is a project led by Andy Tillison, whom I’ve been aware of since he used to sell cassettes of Peter Hammill cover versions in Pilgrims fanzine. He’s gone on to release several albums with his band, Parallel or 90 Degrees. The Tangent is apparently one of those solo projects that got a little out of hand with the guest musos, so the sheer amount of star power involved (“star” being a relative term) garnered it a release on biggie Inside/Out Music. The Tangent are Tillison, Flower Kings guitarist Roine Stolt, and—gee whiz—David “Jaxon” Jackson, Van der Graaf Generator’s dark lord of the saxophone. Assorted Po90D personnel and Flower Kingers round out the lineup. This is a very good-humoured, enjoyable album—music about music, more than anything else. For instance, the second track, The Canterbury Sequence, is about the act of listening to music—the narrator digs Caravan and Hatfield and the North—and the sense of nostalgia it can produce, even if, like our narrator, you weren’t there at the time: “Feigned innocence and humour/Through my Walkman on a bike ride in the sun/My bicycle and I/we missed the party back in 1971.” The song is a mini-suite—all jazzy flutes and Hammond—that takes a detour through Hatfield and the North’s “Chaos at the Greasy Spoon” at mid-point. Three of the four songs are what I’d call epics, between 8 and 20 minutes. The exception is “Up-hill From Here,” clocking in at a breezy 7:11. This one gets up a good head of steam, and resolves into a super-catchy chorus/post-chorus/hook sequence that reveals some serious songwriting skills. It’s prog and all, and everybody gets to take a solo, but it’s not just a wank. I wish I could pin down who this song reminds me of. The Wonderstuff maybe? Anyway it stands out like a tuneful little island amidst the meandering subcontinents surrounding it. The last (title) track is a bring-down after the first three songs. It’s a little on the sleepy side, offering what could be an effective cultural commentary if it wasn’t presented in such a laid-back, MOR context: “We pay people to destroy us/in the media every day/So we’ll know our place and keep it/And never want to move away.” I’d prefer that the album didn’t end with a whimper, although I’m happy that it ended there, after 48 minutes. The Tangent don’t overstay their welcome, delivering a good dose of faith for the faithful in the process.

There was a strike this week. It’s depressing the amount of vitriol that people harbour. The bile in their letters and soundbites implies that everybody’s got it better than them, and nobody deserves anything, especially not people who serve food or do other manual labour. Nobody deserves job and wage protection, they say. Nobody deserves to make enough money to pay for a home and take care of a family, buy some stuff and take the occasional vacation. Nobody deserves time to raise their children. Nobody deserves a voice.

People who gripe about these things don’t have the imagination to visualize anything different for themselves. They only want to bring others—people just like themselves—down to their level, or at least down a peg or two. Everything beyond their immediate control is a source of blind distrust and resentment. They don’t seem to see that one victory might lead to others; that we all could be better off someday. Instead they watch the losses mount, believing it when they’re told that everything’s going to be all right.

The ever-helpful Sun published the hourly wages of every member of a Spirit-class ferry in the paper today, to prove a point, I suppose. Rub salt into wounds. Never mind that it’s none of anyone’s business what people get paid. Looking at the numbers, I don’t make as much money as the lowest paid member of a ferry crew. Then again, I get to sit in a warm office every day, I get to leave for work and come home at the same hour every day, I can wear whatever I want, and I don’t have to deal with members of the public who are angry at me for doing exactly what they would do in the same situation.

My company does the right thing and gives me a few benefits, but it could all disappear tomorrow. I understand this last fact, and I wish it wasn't true. I still think I'm the luckiest bastard on earth.

There’s a Christmas toy drive on, and I'm watching the box gradually fill up with stuffed animals. God. You’d think needy children are all affection-starved, tactilely challenged, insecure basket cases. I’m all for charity, and I love Christmas, but seeing stuffed animals and other plush goods in a toy drive box makes me want douse the whole works in kerosene, flick a match in and watch the heap of “flame retardant” synthetics and post-consumer-recovered stuffings melt into a bubbling, blue-flaming pool of toxicity. The box would then be empty, ready to receive useful, welcome gifts. If I was dictator, I’d demand that it be filled with Lego, Hot Wheels, Barbies, and books, games, etc. The best place for stuffies is the local rifle range.

Dimmu Borgir/Nevermore/Children of Bodom/Hypocrisy Dec. 1 at the Commodore Ballroom
Nobody I contacted could be my +1 for the gig, so I felt a bit like Billy No-Mates as I joined a queue that stretched around the block. The size of the lineup made me flash back to the last time I tried to Dimmu Borgir—“tried” being the operative word, because I got stuck in the lineup and never got in, due to sketchiness and incompetence by the promoters on down. This time the line moved steadily, and half an hour later, I was inside.

Hypocrisy came on first in a mass of windmilling hair and scurrying bodies. I always thought Hypocrisy was a trio, but there were four of them tonight. The lineup gave them twin lead-guitar capability, which they showcased throughout their half-hour set, notably on a great new song, “Eraser.” The Swedes have always been a workmanlike entity, with mainman Peter Tagtgren most noted for his production work at Abyss Studios. I’ll praise their material for its diversity more than anything else, with songs that either chug mercilessly or speed along at an unreasonable clip. I was disappointed they didn’t tip their hat to Canada by doing their awesome cover of Razor’s “Evil Invaders”, but they did end their set with “Roswell 47,” which aroused fists-in-the-air jubilance from the crowd. To borrow a line from Jeff Wagner, “Roswell 47” is Hypocrisy’s “Rock ’n’ Roll All Nite.”

After a quick 15-minute changeover, Finland’s Children of Bodom came on. The five-piece seem to be a love-’em/hate ’em proposition with metal fans. The Quebecker who sat next to me during Hypocrisy was definitely primed to see them, and so were most of the crowd. I think CoB’s style—Yngwie Malmsteen classical virtuoso metal with keyboards fused onto an extreme black/speed metal framework—irks the manly men purists out there, and truthfully it’s not really my cup of tea either…though it’s a blast in small doses. The whole set was just a blur of wheedling keyboards and guitar, trading lines like Mahavishnu or Mastermind. More than half an hour of this may have betrayed the material’s lack of substance, but as it was, CoB were pretty near the best band of the night.

This was a funny gig for me. I wasn’t really there to see any one band over the others. I have albums by all the acts on the bill except Nevermore, who were on next. I was expecting that their more traditional metal style would sound really immense, but Nevermore were a big disappointment. Vocalist Warrell Dane looks like he’s seen better days and the guitars were just a mass of downtuned 7-string sludge, rendering the riffs miserably undetectable. No fun.

Dimmu Borgir set things right again with great sound and staging. Their keyboard-heavy material came across as pretty slick for Norwegian Black Metal. I could understand how it could appeal to the wee Marilyn Manson goth girls in the crowd. I didn’t know that Dimmu are basically an all-star band now, with Uncle Fester from Cradle of Filth on drums and Galder from Old Man’s Child on guitar. I was really impressed by their bassist, the first proper finger-playing bassist on stage that night. And when he stepped up to the mike to perform the clean singing parts—man, what a voice! He was like one of the three tenors. Really, though, he sounded to me like Simen, the old Borknagar singer…and it turns out that’s who he was! What a superstar. I couldn’t see Fester down on the floor, so I went up to the side seating area to for a better view. Fester was still pretty hidden by all the dry ice fog, but from what I could see, he’s not looking that great these days. He looked like one of these guys. The band were wearing the studded shin guards that feature so prominently in their promo photos…very impressive. They look like the ideal accessories for puncturing Christians (you’d have to pick them off like burrs), or for aerating the lawn.

I had to get up early the next morning to travel down the states for work, so I left before the first encore. No more Death Cult Armageddon for me; I needed some shuteye.

"I could murder a pint. It'd be a crime of passion."
Jack Duckworth, Coronation Street

I’m coming up for air again, having polished off the editing for the next Unrestrained! We’re up to issue #23. When did I come on board…was it #6? That’s a lot of metal passing under my nose in a few short years.

The final push consisted of copyediting a 50-page Word file of album reviews. I presume some of them will go in the mag and some will go on the Web site. Every issue I’m simply blown away by the verbiage that our writers crank out. Do they have jobs, do they eat? I get depressed by other people’s productivity. I always go into a new issue intending to submit a paltry half dozen reviews, but I get beaten down by the editing each time. This time I finished two. Two reviews amongst maybe 140 others. That’s pretty lame.

I’ve come across some pretty screwed-up stuff over the past few days.

A) An old drunk at the Jolly Alderman on Thursday night had some interesting ideas to tell our group about using electromagnetism to send convicts to the moon. Apparently the trip would only take seven seconds. At first he seemed like a good guy to humour along, then it became clear that he was a total bore. He made his initial point, then returned to his perch. When he came back for round two, fancy shooed him away.

B) People talking about George Bush like he’s Mother Teresa. My dad’s friend Vaughn from Saltspring left a voicemail the other night in a vacant, entranced timbre, probably quoting soundbites off the news: “I honestly can’t imagine who I’d rather spend Thanksgiving with. That man put his life at risk to come and visit us. He’s my hero. Give him an A-plus.” Heh-heh.

C) Janeane Garofalo. Sweet Jesus, what’s gone wrong there?

D) Butt implants. Saw an item about them on some VH-1 show that MuchMoreMusic imports. Nice idea. The show followed some Hispanic woman who felt let down because her ass didn't match up to J-Lo's. As if that wasn't enough pressure, her husband preferred a bigger butt as well. Great, all the more reason to go under general anesthetic and have two donut-sized gel bags jammed into each buttock. Afterwards, she didn't look any different, but, she said, her sex life had improved. Bully for her and the implanted-butt-lovin' dickhead she rolls around with. I hope those implants don't migrate and slip down her leg. She could end up with a second pair of knees.

Our foray into dance music for medium-sized gatherings was a disaster. We’d begged and borrowed and lost not a little sleep over the task of putting the music together, but by Friday Fancy and I had four discs of rock-solid, people-pleasing tunes that never degenerated into the kind of cheese more appropriate for (as the belter put it) Shannon and Gary's wedding. If people couldn’t dance to this, we said, it wouldn’t be our fault.

The reunion itself was great—nice dinner in posh surroundings with good company. A DiffMusic reader or two “came out” to me, which caught me off guard. (I’ve now upwardly revised my estimated audience numbers by one half). After dessert, I helped clear tables and chairs off the dance floor and asked Maureen, the superb woman who’d organized the event, about the PA.

She led me to a decade-old ghetto blaster that the venue had supplied, one of those largish portable stereos with a 25-CD cartridge and dual cassette deck. The speakers looked up to the job, but the rest of it didn’t. The “play” button was caved in, and that CD tray had me worried. I’ve never trusted the whole consumer-grade CD jukebox concept.

I loaded it with three discs and crossed my fingers. Our first selection, “Nothing But Flowers” by Talking Heads, started playing. The venue staff adjusted the lighting and switched the mirror ball on. Perfect. It was only a matter of time before our meticulously sequenced CDs worked their magic, gradually building towards a dance explosion that would rival Deney Terrio’s Dance Fever, if not Mel’s Rock Pile.

Shortly into the second song (Elastica, “Connection”), we were asked to turn it down.

Halfway through the second song (Elastica, “Connection”) the CD skipped and went back to the middle of the first song.

Thus ended the dance portion of the evening. We formed a troubleshooting huddle around the stereo, immersed in our own private disaster while everyone else in the place had a nice chat. We tried disc two, and the same thing happened—we got halfway through the second song, then it was déjà vu all over again. We tried to skip ahead to songs 3, 4, or 5. No music resulted. A distraught Fancy, fortified by prime rib and gin & tonics, kicked me in the shin.

Half an hour before the event ended, a staffer brought us a much smaller CD player to use, a feeble, tinny sounding unit that played our discs perfectly.

To sum up: The whole mishap was the perfect argument against reproducing music digitally. If I’d filled up a beautiful TDK SA90 with the same tunes, we’d be heroes.

While compiling the music, we rejected dozens of our fave artists for not being danceable enough, including Neil Young. Looking back, however, a double shot of “Piece of Crap” and “F*!#in' Up” would have suited the occasion perfectly.

While we’re on the subject of puppets… A little while ago Fancy mentioned Nanalan’ [Flash], her new favourite kids' show. I just want to reiterate that is by far the best thing in the CBC Kids lineup, kicking the bejeezus out of the likes of Arthur and Clifford the Big Red Dog. It’s a puppet show about a little girl, Mona, who visits her Nana every day while Mona’s mother is at work. Mona looks like an alien, with a round green head and huge glossy black eyes and speaks a semi-decipherable toddler dialect. She has a dog named Russell (“Ruster!” sez Mona) who larks about with her outside.

The best part of Nanalan’, and it doesn’t happen every episode, is when Mona, Russell, and Nana go next door to Mr. Wooka’s house, where he puts on a puppet show for them in a little puppet theatre he has in his backyard. When this happens, and I’m watching a puppet put on a puppet show for other puppets, my head feels like it’s about to pop clean off.

On last Sunday's Coronation Street, Steve McDonald made a remark I felt I should investigate.

Joe Carter, Baldwin's puppet



Captain Scarlet, Anderson's puppet


Yep, separated at birth. Nice one, Steve.

I have to compile some music for the dance portion of a reunion dinner/dance. It’s a challenge to come up with stuff. My music collection isn’t exactly rich with tunes to dance to. With fancy’s help we extracted a bunch of things that might please the people, and after she raided Mel and Adam’s shelves we gathered a good two hours’ worth of danceworthy material. Anyone with a Britpop fetish should be well pleased.

I’m determined to make the playlist completely populist. No Sonic Youth even. I initially wanted to include Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control,” but I ended up rejecting it after I put it on and tried to picture copyeditors and corporate communications specialists moving to it. Poor old Ian wouldn’t have wanted it that way. On the other hand I never thought I'd be so glad to hear “Groove is in the Heart” as when the belter pulled out a Deee-Lite CD and loaded it into the iTunes.

I thought I’d be able to use a lot of the stuff I got during the half-decade I used Spin as my buying guide, but apart from a couple They Might Be Giants songs and maybe some Bjork, I’m not finding much. It’s all Jesus Lizard and no Jesus Jones.

I've got a line on a copy of Abba Gold, and I'll mine that for all it's worth.

If anyone has suggestions for more surefire dance hits, please drop me a note.

Don't rent Laurel Canyon. It's a very bad movie. I can't understand why critics didn't highjack every available entertainment media outlet and proclaim this fact in loud voices or IN UPPER CASE LETTERS — "LAUREL CANYON BLOWS!" Instead most of them claimed it was pretty good, all in all.

But it isn't. It's awful, and the characters never shut up. When the movie reaches its climax and the characters have their big blowout and call each other fucking assholes, I wasn't rooting for our protagonist, and I wasn't hoping that anyone would get their comeuppance. All I could think was, "What a couple of fucking assholes."

Lou Barlow is in it, more or less as an extra, perhaps to lend authenticity to the rock milieu the movie tries to conjure. That's about the only thing I found interesting about it.

One way to amuse yourself while watching Laurel Canyon is to reimagine it as a porno movie. Every illogical/improbable character reaction makes more sense that way. "This is where the lesbian scene would go." "This would be a good time for a solo scene in the bathtub." "I'd say the orgy sequence is coming up in about five minutes."

The trick (if you want to keep your dinner down) is to imagine it as a porno movie NOT starring Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale. Eww.

I let fancylady test some new red earth nail enamel on my thumb last night. I forgot about it until I got to work and sat down at my desk today. Though I admired the polish’s superb coverage and deep colour, I scraped it off right then. That’s not the kind of attention I want at work. I’m sure I’m already viewed with suspicion because I don’t own a car. Amongst my coworkers (to paraphrase Christian Slater in Heathers), if you can’t smoke your tires in third gear you might as well be wearing a dress.

Just as a man with two watches never knows what time it is, a man who can catch two buses to the same destination never knows which one to take. That man would be me. I face the choice every day—99B or 9. The former gets me to the train faster, but it doesn’t come as often. Number 9 buses come in a steady stream all morning, but they stop on nearly every block and are packed by the time I reach Broadway station. I used to be picky and wait for the 99B, but now I just take whichever bus comes first. I’m happy as long as I’m moving.

If that hasn't put you into a coma yet, here’s another scenario to ponder. To get home from my parents’ place I can choose from three buses. It’s great, except that these buses stop on different sides of one intersection. So I’ve basically got to choose one bus stop, then hope that’s the first bus to arrive. It never works out that way.

Last night I chose to wait for bus A. A few seconds later, bus B drove past. I looked down the road and couldn’t see any sign of bus A, so I crossed the street to wait for bus C. Five minutes after that, bus A arrived. I probably could have made it back across the intersection to catch it, but I'd made my choice. C it would be.

Having just hit a new low of banality, why stop there? On the number 9 this morning I sat beside an elderly Asian woman, her works completely gummed up with nicotine, whose constant wheezing sounded like a cross between William S Burroughs and a didgeridoo. It was almost enough to distract me from this Bill Bryson book I just started.

I don’t know what Bryson’s deal is. I don’t know if he’s regarded as a genius, or if he shares space with Erma Bombeck and Dave Barry in the “folksy humour for nincompoops” genre. My parents like him. I've read and reread the article he did on Blackpool for National Geographic. He knows how to turn a phrase. He makes me laugh. A few paragraphs about in-sink garbage disposals got me going on the way up Burnaby Mountain today. All tensed up and grimacing with stifled laughs, I’m probably as tempting a travel companion as a rheumy old woman dying for a fag on the number 9.