Swerve Magazine Fun Blog

2009-05-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

LINA'S ITALIAN MARKET

2008-06-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

The smell of baking bread and simmering tomato sauce washes over you like a warm bath when you step through the door. To your right, skinny shelves stacked with fine kitchenware: miniature espresso cup-and-saucer sets emblazoned with the Illy coffee logo, knives, colanders, pestle and mortars. To your left, a bustling cafeteria cordoned off with a demi-wall. More on that later. Many come to Lina’s Italian Market just to eat and run, but the time-gifted should allow themselves a little bit of foreplay—a slow perusal of the dried pastas and pickles; the produce table with baskets of hazelnuts and rows of quince and nespole; the cookie shelves displaying mouthfuls like “Quadratini” and “Napolitanke,” perfectly shaped for dipping into those teeny espresso cups.
All aisles lead to a white-tiled horizon and the whine of deli-slicers cutting salamis into paper-thin rounds to be layed out and wrapped in butcher paper. Beside that, blocks of cheeses with names like “Sardo,” “Pecorino Rustico,” and “Crotonese.” Around the bend are the olives—all manner of shapes, sizes and colours, pitted and non-pitted, spiced and non-spiced. And beyond that, the chocolate-dipped desserts dusted with powdered sugar.
Just try to bypass the cafeteria: the pizzas, the pasta of the day, the panini sandwiches served in oblong rolls sawed off at each end. Your default order is the panini calabrese—a trio of hot salami, creamy provolone and briny eggplant tucked into crusty white bread. You pay on the other side of the retro-styled Elektra espresso machine and shimmy through the lunch-rush crowd of golf-shirted business guys, retirees, yuppie couples with baby bumps and moms out for some “me time,” looking for a spot at one of the tightly arranged tables.
For the next few minutes, it’s just you and that sandwich. Eventually, you dot your lip with a paper napkin and turn your gaze to the picture windows, certain that on the other side lies a lush cobblestone courtyard packed with beautiful couples wearing Ferragamo shoes. What you see instead is the utilitarian causeway of Centre Street. Beyond that, graceless stripmalls feature pawnshops, insurance brokers and the Vanishing Rabbit Magic Shop. You’re not in Italy. You’re in Calgary. But that’s okay, because it tastes like calabrese heaven.

SWERVE SHOPS

2008-06-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Suzie Q Beads has moved around the corner from its old space into a larger
storefront just off Inglewood’s main drag. In addition to the plethora of beads and beading classes it offers, Suzie Q has a great selection of jewelry, like these bangles
($85 and $95) and cufflinks ($85) by Kolas Designs featuring beetles suspended
in Lucite. 917 12th St. S.E., 266-1202.

WORKING THE RANCH

2008-06-09T12:11:00.000-07:00

A Photo Essay by George Webber.

Its official name is the Chinook Ranch, but if you call the 6,000-acre spread the Hughes place, people around Longview will know what you mean.
The land, which is about four miles south of Longview (if you say six kilometres, folks around here might not know what you mean), has been in the Hughes family since 1945. That’s when Jim Hughes Sr. bought it (he added to his holdings in the ’50s when the neighboring Bar U broke up). Jim Sr. was born in 1903 on a Hereford farm in Herefordshire, England and grew up to raise Herefords (sense a pattern here?). He came to Canada in 1928 (family lore says he left England with $2 in his pocket), docked in Halifax and got on a westbound train. Once settled, he and his wife Mary had six children, including Jim Jr., now 65, who is in the process of handing the management reins to his son Stephen, 40.
It was Stephen’s younger sister Janet Pliszka who first invited photographer George Webber out to the family spread. She took a darkroom course from Webber in 2000 and when she got married at the ranch three years later, Webber took the pictures.
The wedding took place August 16, three months after the United States banned beef imports from Canada as a result of mad-cow disease. That made for some tough times at the ranch, “I’m attracted to edgy things,” Webber says. “BSE and the border being closed was the hook for me to go back.” Without this turn of events, Webber would have considered the subject of working cowboys to be “if not a cliché, then certainly which intrigued the photographer. well-done.” Instead, as he discovered when he first went to branding day in June of 2004, he was drawn to document a way of life in southern Alberta that is in peril.
The threat has not really lessened with the 2005 reopening of the U.S. border to cattle 30-months-old and younger. Now the challenge is tied to the falling U.S. greenback and the rising Canadian dollar. “It’s hard to make a profit right now,” says Janet. “It’s worse now than in BSE times.”
It’s just another thing the family has to deal with. One of their responses has been to shift their focus and start selling directly to customers—Janet says the move to eat locally produced food has helped in this regard. To promote its products, the ranch is about to unveil that standard feature of modern marketing, a website (www.chinookranch.com), designed by Janet’s husband, Harold Pliszka.
It’s the least he could do. In an admission that still makes Janet shriek with laughter, she says that Harold is a vegan who, to her knowledge, has never been on a horse. That news went over better than you might think when she brought him home to meet the folks. “My parents are not judgmental,” Janet says.
That same quality worked in Webber’s favour when he started photographing life on the ranch. “I need to achieve that practical thing of getting people bored with me so they just get on with their work,” he says. As his photographs show, there is always plenty of work to be done around the Chinook Ranch. That is never truer than on branding day, one of the longest days of the year and the clearest expression of what life on the ranch is all about. By Bruce Weir.

BIL HETHERINGTON

2008-06-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

The charismatic frontman of Calgary’s The Neckers, Bil Hetherington has love and will travel with the group’s long-running recipe of poppy garage rock. However, more recently, the easygoing singer/songwriter has been plugging away at the long-delayed release of his solo debut, 10 soft and tender tracks that traverse the themes of romance, politics and an achy (but not quite breaky) heart. “I had a bunch of songs that didn’t really work with The Neckers,” Hetherington explains, over a pint at his former place of work, the Hop and Brew. “These songs probably date back to 2000 or 2001, so this album is actually my greatest hits.”
Produced by Lorrie Matheson, and featuring the talents of Broken Social Scenester Lisa Lobsinger, bassist Steve Elaschuk and drummer Kyle Koenig (among others), Through The Sunspots is an easy-on-the-ears collection of tunes from one of the local music scene’s friendliest fellas. The Asian Tigers now include drummer Ian Russell and guitarist Jon Hopkins alongside Elaschuck, which should help fill out Hetherington’s sound in the live arena.

WHAT TO WEAR TO THE WEDDING

2008-06-05T15:08:00.000-07:00

written by Cynthia Cushing

Neither of my daughters is getting married soon, although one of them knows exactly what her wedding will be like when the day comes. She’s considered venues, time of day, dresses, shoes, registries, the cake and her attendants. She’s even given a certain amount of thought to the qualities that would be admirable in a groom. So I said to her one night at dinner, “What do you want me to wear to your wedding?”
“You? You can wear whatever you want. I don’t care,” she answered.
I asked my husband. “What do you think a mother of the bride should wear?”
“Is someone getting married? Who cares what you wear?” he said.
“That,” I said as I popped the cork back in the wine bottle and whisked it away just as he was about to pour a second glass, “is my point exactly. Who cares? Nobody but me.”
Well, me and every other woman with daughters of marrying age. We’ve been to our share of weddings and we’ve seen the horror that awaits she who does not care what she wears or, worse, she who thinks she shouldn’t care what she wears. This is the mother of the bride in the pale seafoam dress with the little chiffon capelet, the pearls, the rosebud corsage, the timid hat and the bone-coloured pumps with one-and-a-half-inch heels. We’ve seen her yet not seen her; she is the invisible woman. We never gave her a thought until our daughters’ friends started getting married. Now, we’re thinking that the mother- of-the-bride dress is one of the toughest looks to pull off. It’s tougher than the first day of Grade 8, tougher than prom night and much, much tougher than your own wedding. But is it impossible? Not at all. I’ve critiqued mothers’ clothes at weddings I’ve attended recently and asked every woman over 50 whom I know what she would wear. I have searched for role models in all areas of public life. I’ve come up with two mother-of-the-bride looks that almost anyone can wear and make her own, no matter how time-pressed or fashion-backward she might be.
First, you need to realize what you are up against. There are reasons for the ubiquity of the seafoam dress, the main one being fear of overhearing a guest at the wedding say, “Did you get a load of what the mother of the bride is wearing? Is she trying to look like she’s 20?”
Rule One for the mother of the bride? Never outshine the bride. That’s a rule to which most of us can adhere without trying. Rule Two? Never look as if you are trying to outshine the bride. Anything too clingy, too colourful, too ruffled or too revealing and the mother of the bride might as well have cards printed that say Desperately Trying to Hold On to My Youth Despite All Evidence to the Contrary and then hand them out in the receiving line. At least that’s what we imagine and it makes being invisible infinitely preferable.

For the rest of this article click here.

JARVIS HALL FINE FRAMES

2008-05-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

As a self-taught gilder living in Calgary, Jarvis Hall has combed the Internet and historical texts for insights into the centuries-old art of applying gold and silver leaf. “It’s like being in a dark room, especially in Canada and especially in this part of Canada—there’s nobody else who does it.”
That’s why his recent meeting with Giovanni Bucchi was so welcome. Hall’s hookup with the master gilder occurred, like all good meetings, at a conference in Las Vegas. At the end of the month Hall will travel to New York to study with Bucchi, whose clients include the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but who is perhaps best known as an appraiser on The Antiques Roadshow. “My work should take a big leap,” Hall says. “He’s ridiculously good.”
The thought of Hall’s craftsmanship improving is a little scary. He’s already adept at the arts of hand-carving and gilding frames, a process that involves applying 10 coats of gesso (hide glue mixed with marble dust) and sanding it “porcelain smooth” before putting on five coats of burnishing clay. Then the gold leaf is applied, burnished and toned using shellac mixed with pigment.
All his skills are on display in the ornate piece he is currently making for an art collector who purchased a Corot at auction in New York. The frame, which is based on those produced during the reign of Louis XVI, will take about 70 hours to produce and cost $5,000.
That’s a good chunk of time but it represents a big change in the august art of gilding. “I was joking with my father that if I was doing this for the king, I’d have two years,” Hall says. “It’d be a meagre living, but the king would give me a few animals—enough to keep my family fed— and a cold room.”
Hall has done better than that since leaving Paul Kuhn Gallery to start his eponymous shop three years ago. But that’s not to say he doesn’t sometimes envy those earlier craftsmen. Instead of the king’s patronage, Hall is “dealing with modern prices, Calgary rent and compressing two years into six weeks.”

HELEN KOENTGES

2008-05-26T09:41:00.000-07:00

by Chris Koentges
Illustrations by Julie McLaughlin

The key term in Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is multi-forme. (Please bear with me through the science of this.) Multiforme means that there are multiple forms of cancerous cells, glioblastoma means that these forms are exceedingly malignant. Consequently, GBM always evolves towards:

(a) its most malignant form—which is also:
(b) the form that makes it most difficult to destroy.

And so you already see the paradox: by treating GBM—if you choose to treat it—you are, by definition, creating a stronger, more resistant mutation with each attempt. Craniotomies. Radiation. Temodol beyond the bounds of the clinic’s established protocol. Experimental virus therapy. Green tea, fresh dandelion, a poisonous cocktail of intravenous Carboplatin mixed with the maximum dose of Tamoxifen—the shock-and-awe that almost wipes GBM out one day only creates an increasingly awesome mutation of it the next. On and on until you’re left with something indestructible growing inside your brain, until one day, there is no space left inside your brain for it to grow.

The alternative? Well, researchers have witnessed the mass of an untreated GBM tumour double in a week, then double again, and again and again until—well, GBM very seldom fails. And there’s something to be said on GBM’s behalf for that. It is efficient. We are a culture that respects efficiency above all else. Such is the calibre of GBM’s efficiency, in fact, that it is scientifically quantified by the prognosis: “six months (give or take).”
Cancer can receive no higher compliment than “six months give or take.” And that will be the last it gets from us today.

For the rest of this article click here.

SWERVE TRAVEL LISTINGS

2008-05-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

BLUE CRUSH: RIPPIN IT UP FROM PERU TO TOFINO AND EVERY WAVE IN BETWEEN.

HIGH LIFE: Hotel los Delfines, Lima, Peru. Sure it’s in San Isidro, the city’s ritzy financial district, but that doesn’t mean surfers can’t stay here. After all, if dolphins are welcome—the hotel is named after them and includes a dolphinarium with two residents—how can they turn away humans in flip-flops? Rooms start at $450 but why not splash out on the Suite Olimpo, which runs $2,145 (US) a night? It includes a sauna and Jacuzzi, both of which might come in handy after a day in the waves. You’ll find those off one of the many beaches just outside Lima. In fact, the range of options might leave you wanting a break. Those who want a little turf with their surf will be happy to know Los Delfines overlooks a golf course. Visit losdelfineshotel.com for reservations and more info.

MIDDLE GROUND: Surf Diva, La Jolla, California. Back in 1996, twin sisters Isabelle and Caroline Tihanyi started their school and began introducing women to the waves. Surfers know the two as Izzy and Coco, and Surf Diva as the place to get their feet wet and hone their skills. This summer’s offerings range from two-day weekend clinics to an overnight camp or, as it’s known at Surf Diva, Boarding School (get it?). Clinics offer four hours of instruction per day and cost $135. The weeklong camps (there are some for teens and some for adults) are $1,485 and include accommodation at the University of California, San Diego, meals and transportation to the beach in Surf Diva’s eye-catching pink Betty Bus. Visit surfdiva.com for more information.

BUDGET CONSCIOUS: Green Point Campground, Pacific Rim National Park. There are more luxe ways to do a surfing vacation on Vancouver Island (pay up to $975 per night for the Canopy Room at the Wickaninnish Inn; wickinn.com) but if it’s a salty beach holiday you’re after, there’s nothing better (or less expensive) than waking up to the sound of waves crashing outside your tent. Cox Bay, Long Beach and South Chesterman, while not as balmy as, say, Maui get fairly impressive swells (six-feet plus) and the hot-blooded can rip it up every day year round. Visit gotofino.com for up-to-date wave reports. To book a campsite at Green Point (the only provincial campground in the area), situated midway between Tofino and Ucluelet, visit pccamping.ca. Pack a wetsuit—yes, even in July.

HONEYMOONING IN GEORGIA

2008-05-26T08:53:00.000-07:00

by Marcello di Cintio

Moonira and I learned only one word in Georgian during our visit to the ex-Soviet Republic: taplobistvay. The word means “honeymoon” and, as it turned out, it was the only word we ever needed to know.
The Georgians are a cheerful lot who need little incentive to make merry. The arrival of the morning sun seems all the occasion necessary to drain a bottle of vodka or a jug of the saperavi wine for which Georgia is famous. (Sadly, saperavi is cloying and sweet and about as palatable to western tastes as Georgia’s other famous export, Josef Stalin.) The Georgian arsenal of mirth is always on a hair-trigger, so when two foreigners on their honeymoon show up and mutter taplobistvay in a Canadian accent, things tend to get out of hand.
This happened for the first time in a minibus at the foot of Mount Kazbek, a peak whose profile we got to know well since it adorns the label on the country’s most popular beer. As we waited for the bus to depart for the capital, we mentioned to a man in the bus that we were on our taplobistvay. He left the bus immediately and walked to one of the tiny stalls nearby that sold cheap booze, chocolate bars, chewing gum, sausage links, and hanging bouquets of dried fish. He came back with a bottle of red wine. At his urging, and in honour of our recent union, we guzzled back cup after plastic cup until the bottle was empty. It was nine in the morning.
There were many moments like this, but our favourite taplobistvay-inspired mischief came on our last night in Tbilisi, Georgia’s faded capital city. Moonira and I were searching for a restaurant in the Old Town, but the few restaurants recommended to us were all empty and we were tired of solitary dining. We found a beer hall near the banks of the Mtkvari River. It was filled with noisy men drinking at long wooden tables. Stuffed animal heads adorned the walls. It was not the sort of place Moonira and I imagined for our last Tbilisi dinner, but at least the place was alive.

To read the rest of this article click here.

MAY LISTINGS

2008-05-16T12:41:00.000-07:00

Banff Summer Arts Festival
When: Ongoing, until Friday, Sept. 5
What: “Festival,” in this case, is just a handy umbrella term for four solid months of summer arts programming at the Banff Centre. The May lineup has a strong focus on jazz performances as well as the debut of a new work by Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal.
Where: 107 Tunnel Mountain Dr., Banff.
Box office: 1-800-413-8368.
banffcentre.ca/bsaf/2008.

Otafest
When: Friday, May 16 to Sunday, May 18
What: The little animation festival that began 10 years ago as a one-day film fest has hit double digits and my, how it has grown. This year’s party includes Otafest Idol with anime and J-pop tunes, chess with live-action pieces, Pocky sculptures and plenty of cosplay.
Where: University of Calgary. Admission: adults, $20; children six to 12, $10.
otafest.com.

Canmore Children’s Festival
When: Friday, May 16 and Saturday, May 17
What: A comedic daredevil, extreme hula-hooper and huge pirate-themed game of tag are a few of the wacky and wonderful events. Big Friday includes a break-dance workshop and Much Video Dance experience with pizza and soft drinks.
Where: Canmore Collegiate High School, 1800 8th Ave. Big Friday, $10; Saturday admission, $2; festival pass, $10, includes mainstage shows Michael Berends Magic, Checkerboard Guy and Norman Foote.
canmorechildrensfestival.com.

Windy Mountain Music
When: Friday, May 16 to Sunday, May 18
What: Jewish-themed films, discussions and cuisine with chamber concerts influenced by Jewish world-music and the Klezmer tradition in Alberta’s oldest theatre.
Where: The Empress Theatre, 235 Main St., Fort Macleod. Four-concert pass, $70; students, $24. Individual concerts, $25; students, $12. Taste of Israel, meal, $32.50; wine tasting, $15. Films, $5; students, $3.50.
windymountain.ca.

Calgary International
Children’s Festival
When: Tuesday, May 20 to
Saturday, May 24
What: A parent-friendly, kiddie-oriented festival with 92 performances over five days ranging from hip-hop revues to circus comedy to German puppetry.
Where: At Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts, 205 8th Ave. S.E. Tickets at TM.
calgarychildfest.org.

Festival of Quilts
When: Saturday, May 24 and Sunday, May 25
What: Members from 24 Alberta guilds blanket the park with their cosy and colourful creations.
Where: At Heritage Park, 1900 Heritage Dr. S.W. Free with admission to the park. Adults, $15; seniors, $13; children aged three to 17, $10. 268-8500,
heritagepark.ca.

4th Street Lilac Festival
When: Sunday, May 25
What: One massive block party in Mission with multiple entertainment stages, hundreds of craft and food vendors and crowds upwards of 125,000, all there to celebrate the unofficial start of summer.
Where: 4streetcalgary.com.

Speak Out 10 Learning Festival
When: Monday, May 26 to Saturday, May 31
What: Celebration of disability pride and
culture includes a visual art display at City
Hall; workshops in film, theatre, dance and leadership; talks; a parade and a closing
cabaret night with performances by disabled artists and comedians.
Where: Alexandra Centre, 922 9th Ave. S.E. and Epcor Centre, 205 8th Ave. S.E.
proudtobedisabled.com.

Fairy Tales International
Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
When: Tuesday, May 27 to Thursday, June 5
What: Alberta’s only queer film fest marks its 10th anniversary this year by expanding to ten days and including flashback screenings of films from previous festivals in addition to this year’s new award-winning offerings.
Where: Venues around the city. General
admission, $10; festival pass, $99.
fairytalesfilmfest.com.

Asian Night Market and Festival
When: Friday, May 30, 7 p.m. to midnight,
and Saturday, May 21, 2 p.m. to midnight
What: Storytellers, musicians, game booths and a hustling, bustling market to celebrate Asian Heritage Month.
Where: Olympic Plaza.
asianheritagecalgary.ca.

Bragg Creek Festival
When: Friday, May 30 and Saturday, May 31
What: Because of the unpredictable May weather, the hamlet wisely keeps their
inaugural music fest indoors. Performers
include James Keelaghan, Land’s End
Chamber Ensemble and Balu with Toto
Berriel and Alberto San Martin.
Where: Bragg Creek Centre, 23 White Ave. Friday night workshop, $15. Saturday: adults, $40; youth/seniors, $25. 949-4114,
braggcreekfestival.com.

Canadian Rockies Cowboy Festival
When: Friday, May 30 to Sunday, June 1
What: Music and poetry by Gary Fjellgaard, Larry & Dwain Sands and Joni Harms set against a mountain backdrop. Add in some
two-stepping and a steak barbecue and you can’t get much more cowboy.
Where: David Thompson Resort, 45 km west of Nordegg on Hwy 11. Three-day pass, $70 in advance ($85 at the gate); kids 13-16, $40. Individual tickets: Friday, $20; Saturday, $60; Sunday, $10. 1-888-810-2103,
davidthompsonresort.com.

Rocky Mountain Wine
and Food Festival
When: Saturday, May 31, 2-5 p.m. or 7-10 p.m.
What: The eats-and-drinks-sampling event that has previously whipped epicureans in Calgary, Red Deer and Edmonton into a frenzy, makes its debut in Banff with its Grand Tasting Hall of premium booze and mini-meals.
Where: At Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and Resort. Tickets $20 online; $25 at the door. Sampling coupons 50 cents each.
rockymountainwine.com.

THE FESTIVALS ARE COMING TO TOWN.

2008-05-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

:
Illustration: Genevieve Simms

He’s dealt with floods, windstorms and snow in July but it’s not the weather that gives Calgary Folk Festival general manager les siemieniuk nightmares. It’s trees. What you, the blissfully ignorant audience member, probably never realized is that the placement of the festival’s six side-stages in the existing groves at Prince’s Island Park leaves little room for new plantings. So when siemieniuk (yes, he’s an e.e. cummings acolyte) showed up at the park to find a crew about to plant a cart full of trees, it took a series of “frantic phone calls” to avoid having to redraw the festival site map. Ever since, siemieniuk’s had nightmares about waking up on opening day to find a forest growing in front of his mainstage, and a bitter audience who can’t see the headliner for the trees.
What’s really scary (particularly for anyone out there who is considering entering the circus that is festival production and planning) is that there are still random factors, such as over-enthusiastic arborists, that can throw a seasoned ringmaster like siemieniuk for a loop. Over its storied 29-year history, the Folk Fest is a bit of a Boy Scout in the sense that it has learned how to be prepared for anything. Organizers fortify themselves with a volunteer corps that exceeds 1,300. Top-guns siemieniuk and artistic director Kerry Clarke have 42 years of experience between them and have seen each other through the agony of soggy grounds, toppling stereo towers, “complex” artistic personalities, spaghetti avalanches (a catering thing, one of the reasons they now cook for volunteers on site) and having the lone truck-accessible causeway to the festival site washed out by the floods of 2005. Then there’s the annual paper trail of permits (after three decades, the festival still cannot “pass Go”—each go-round, they must undertake the same application process as a newbie event). Not to mention the plate-spinning routine of satisfying all the various city departments (bylaws, health, fire, police, et al). Oh yeah, and did we mention that around here it’s been known to snow in July?

For the rest of this article Click Here.

Contest

2008-05-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

Sure, there are those who can whip together a finger-lickin’ feast off the top of their head, no recipes or planning required. Mere mortals, however, can always use a hand. For your chance to win a copy of Matt Dunigan’s new cookbook.

The best comment posted on the blog before Thursday, May 22 wins.
Please include your name and daytime contact info. Standard Calgary Herald contest rules apply.

GRAFFITTI STAIRWELL, ACAD.

2008-05-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

Photography: Marc Rimmer

For at least one of the 14 students graduating this May from the four-year Bachelor of Design in Photography at the Alberta College of Art and Design, the prospect of climbing the stairway to a successful career isn’t all that daunting. Attentive Swerve readers will be familiar with Marc Rimmer’s conceptually crisp portraits of Calgary’s diverse arts all-stars, including a
hard-scrubbing Lorrie Matheson, luminously limber dancer Leigh Allardyce and this week’s cover girl, Elinor Holt and her family band. And yes, that was the 22-year-old Rimmer who managed to shoot 24 people in two weeks for Swerve’s special Juno-linked cover story, “Music Lives Here”— at the same time as he was finishing the required coursework that put him at the top of his class, winning the inaugural Rosalee Hiebert Memorial Scholarship, as well as an Anvil Award in the Student Category at the 2008 Ad Rodeo.

For the rest of this article Click Here.

AN EVER-CHANGING LOCAL HAUNT

2008-05-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

Guy walks into a pub carrying two 19th-century English pistols. The place has high, angled pine ceilings and is a little bit like a cathedral, a little bit like a museum. There are bagpipes on the wall. Old fiddles. Golf bags from around the world. The guy soaks up all the little details. Finishes his pint. Pays the bill. Gives the pistols to the bartender—actual guns—and never sets foot in there again.
Different night. Different year. Different bartender. Different guy sitting at the bar. Guy says to the bartender, “You know there’s someone else behind there with you?”
There is nobody else behind the bar.
Bartender nods, says, “Yeah, I know.”

The structure at 540 16th Ave. N.W. was built in 1955, and functioned for four decades as a funeral parlour. It came into the possession of an Englishman named John Wilson, who spent the next two years hacking apart the insides until they became The Cat ’n Fiddle. The cadaver fridges became part of a beer cooler. The area for grieving families a dart room. Ancient whiskey barrels were hoisted up to where the pipe organ used to sit.
It’s not uncommon to turn a funeral home into a British-style pub—The Rose and Crown on 4th Street S.W. is another—but here there was something especially peculiar. If there was stress in the pub, for instance, say a customer threatening one of the waitresses, the pages on the jukebox would flip frantically. It wasn’t that the building had its own consciousness, it was that that consciousness seemed to have a consciousness.

For the rest of this article Click Here.

FAIRY TALE ENDING ON SCRUBS

2008-05-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

It’s only fitting that this sitcom ends—for now, more on that later—with a fairy-tale-themed episode. After all, the eccentric staff at Sacred Heart have led a charmed existence, offering up a giddy mix of fantasy sequences, sight gags and oddball humour without the pressure to pull in big ratings. Although it’s been bandied about, there’s no word—as of press time—if ABC will be Scrubs’ knight in shining now that NBC has pulled the plug on the series.

SHELLEY YOUNGBLUT ON CKUA RADIO.

2008-05-13T11:45:00.001-07:00

Shelley discusses Bruce McCulloch and the Kids In the Hall on CKUA Radio in Edmonton with David Ward.

THE RED BARONESS

2008-05-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

Piano-playing pixie Sarah Slean’s last visit had her alternatingly strong and sweet voice floating like a butterfly through the summer air at the 2007 Folk Festival. Since then, she’s released a new album, The Baroness, which she will no doubt be simply delighted to play as the evening sun streams through the stained glass windows at Knox United Church this Monday.

STAGE MOM

2008-05-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

All About Elinor
By Mieko Ouchi
Photography: Marc Rimmer
Dramas, comedies, musicals - you name it, Elinor Holt can play it. The versatile actor also juggles three kids and a musician husband, leading her friends in the local arts community to marvel: How does she do it.

That’s what eight-year-old Ava tells the babysitters when they ask where her parents are going for the evening. Mommy is Elinor Holt, whose work as an actor, singer and comedienne has been seen on virtually every stage in Calgary. Daddy is musician Spider Bishop, who plays upright string bass with Tim Hus and the Rocky Mountain Two. With three little ones ranging from two to eight, theirs is a home full of scripts, music, toys and a whole lotta love. Last week, the duo cele-brated their ninth wedding anniversary.
And this week is no different—and no less hectic—than any other. Spider’s about to hit the road, while my old friend Elinor is poised to debut as the title character in Urban Curvz’ Helen’s Necklace, which opens at the Pumphouse Theatre on May 8. When I think about all that she has accomplished since we first met as drama students at the University of Alberta 20 years ago, I find myself asking the same question everyone in the local arts community asks, with exactly the same note of wonder and awe: “How does she do it?”

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FARMHOUSE, 15th St. N.E.

2008-05-12T13:08:00.001-07:00

Photographed By Daniel Wood.

The gophers are going to be really cheesed off. When the $3-billion commercial behemoth known as StoneGate Landing appropriates 445 hectares—about 1,000 football fields—of prime tunnelling ground north of the Calgary International Airport, prairie dogs and their ilk will have to vamoose elsewhere. Of course, they’re not the only ones feeling the big squeeze in the northeast, a primo real-estate “opportunity,” the largest in the city’s history, currently projected for completion in 2016.

MY FRIEND, THE WOULD-BE MOTHER TERESA

2008-05-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

My friend is young, talented, good-looking and makes a lot of money. Technically, I should hate her, but guess what? she’s really nice, too. Her one problem: not being happy enough with all that. Mostly she’s guilty about her entitlement, and always expresses envy for my long-term involvement with social causes. Instead of quietly doing her own pro bono work, she’s come up with a plan to shake up her life with a humanitarian mission to a pretty dire part of the world. Fine, but I’m afraid she’s just going to come home and feel empty all over again. Is this a wise move for a person like that?

LOVABLE MISFITS SEEK GOOD HOME.

2008-05-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

Babes In Arms, located in the Birth Partnership midwives clinic in Lakeview, is a boutique specializing in organic and sustainable products. Among their offerings: Belua Designs’ one-of-a-kind sock monsters, handmade by Edmonton artisan Sarah Bourque. Bobo (in the argyle ) and Mrs. Murff are each $30; their little pink friend Scrumpy is $20. At Babes In Arms, 6628 Crowchild Trail S.W., 835-4614, or visit babesinarms.ca.

THIS ONE TIME? IN HO CHI MINH CITY?

2008-05-12T12:53:00.000-07:00

Travel to exotic locations is fascinating—to the person who went on the trip. To the rest of us? Yawn. Is the slide show over yet?

By Steve Burgess

The funniest thing happened today. I was shaving and my can of shave gel was almost out so I started to toss it. Then I realized it was the very can I bought a couple of summers ago on the day I arrived on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, only to discover that I had left my toiletries in Rome. So I had been forced to meander down the narrow shoulder of a twisting coastal road to a tiny little store run by an old lady who lived behind the store, then tiptoe back keeping my eyes peeled for buses swinging around those impossibly tight corners. Ah, what a can of shave gel it was.

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HALT! WHO GOES THERE? THE DREADED STILETTO

2008-05-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

By Shelley Youngblut

It’s that time of year again. With the last freak snowstorm as much a distant memory as the Flames’ playoff hopes, we’re finally free to relegate the mitts, scarves and tuques to plastic bins in the basement, and pull out our capris and shorts (and a razor) in anticipation of a spring that has finally sprung. Best of all, our salt-stained winter boots, having soldiered through a six-month campaign battling snow and sleet, are now on leave... at least until September. Out come the sandals, slingbacks, flats and flip-flops, and with them the entranceway dilemma: Is it ever okay to leave your shoes on once you cross over the threshold from the outside world?
In the winter, that’s an easy etiquette question for a Canadian to answer. No. Absolutely not. Beginning at a very young age, it’s been drilled into us that you take your boots off IMMEDIATELY, wobbling in your down jacket like a Weeble as you pull that toxic Kodiak off your foot and leave familiar salt-and-pepper puddles in the black-rubber boot tray. This knee-jerk behaviour is reinforced in schools in the form of the boot rack, where children dutifully jail their offensive outdoor footwear, then don their precious “inside shoes” (soft-soled and germ-free!), purified from the ankles down in preparation for the learning process. (As a form of punishment at my elementary school, the Grade One teacher would make the offending kid stand with his—it was always a boy—head in the boot rack in the hall. It left the rest of us terrified of outside footwear and more than happy to rid ourselves of it once we made it inside the safety of our own homes.)

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SURVIVOR FINALE

2008-05-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

Mark Burnett’s desert-island classic has outwitted, outlasted and outplayed the competition this season, sporting some serious juice, from the immunity-idol blind sides to the physical breakdowns to James’s sermons on the mount: “Oh, it’s gonna be awkward,” he promised Pavarti, that apple-eating Eve in his Garden of Eden. And this is one year you definitely have to stick around for the reunion show that follows the finale. Sunday, Global, Ch. 7, beginning at 8 p.m., and CBS, Ch. 12, 9 p.m

FAUX ROCK.

2008-05-12T12:01:00.001-07:00

Fake The Music

If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of the Crow’s Nest honky-tonk joint just south of Catheter, Alberta, it’s because it doesn’t exist. This gig poster is a fake—albeit one created by legitimate gig-poster artist Tom Bagley for Fake the Music, a group exhibition currently on display at Looks Could Kill Art Boutique in Art Central.

BRUCE McCULLOCH.

2008-05-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Maddening Art of Television Comedy
By Kevin Brooker.

You haven’t toured Universal Studios until you do it on the back of a golf cart driven by Bruce McCulloch.
“You hicks love this stuff,” he shouts back at his buddies from Calgary, careening around the corner from South Spielberg Drive onto Psycho Pass, just below the Bates Motel and across from the Jaws pond where the breaching-shark gag, more than a little tatty, is frightening yet another busload of tourists.
But what the hicks really love is seeing authentic stars, and as we overtake the studio tour’s canopied people-mover, all eyes strain to see which Hollywood eminences might be riding in the back of the golf cart. Feeling their stares, I wonder for whom I might be mistaken. Is Wally Cox still acting?
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A Red-Nosed Kid In The Hall.
Illustrations by: Matt Luckhurst

These drawing were a little challenging: capturing the likeness of a group of aging comedians is not the easiest task. McCulloch's distinct chin line and permanently youthful allowed me to paint at will, while finding a balance between Foley's old swooped hair and his new died spiky look complete with goatee, was a little trickier. In the end I painted from photos of all of the Kids In The Hall, applied a healthy dose of the 'Luckhurst Rudolph Nose Style' and viola!; finished illustrations.

Bruce McCulloch

Bruce to the Bike Tire Thief